72 Facts About Richard Mohun

Richard Dorsey Loraine Mohun was an American explorer, diplomat, mineral prospector and mercenary.

Richard Mohun remained in the service of the US government during this time and was posted as consul to Zanzibar.

Richard Mohun's most ambitious undertaking was a three-year expedition, beginning in 1898, that laid a telegraph line from Lake Tanganyika to Stanley Falls.

Richard Mohun then spent some time prospecting in South Africa before returning to the Congo to reform the Abir Congo Company on behalf of Leopold II of Belgium.

Richard Dorsey Mohun was born in Washington, DC, on April 12,1864.

Richard Mohun's family had a long association with Africa - his grandfather, William McKenny, had been a prominent figure during the colonisation of the continent and built up a comprehensive collection of photographs during his time there.

Richard Mohun, who was privately tutored at the family home, is known to have seen these photographs whilst growing up.

Richard Mohun developed an interest in the slave trade, which continued under Arab control in Eastern and Southern Africa, and became the fourth member of his family to campaign for its eradication.

Richard Mohun received a commission in the Pay Corps of the United States Navy in 1881 and served on a four-year cruise in the Mediterranean.

Richard Mohun was appointed Assistant Paymaster in 1885 and served with the United States Department of the Navy upon his return from the cruise.

Richard Mohun was promoted to the rank of lieutenant in 1889, the same year he resigned his navy commission to join the United States Department of State.

Richard Mohun was appointed ahead of the missionary Samuel Norvell Lapsley who had been championed by a state senator from Alabama.

Richard Mohun left America for Genoa, Italy with Louis and their sister, Laura.

Richard Mohun then journeyed to the Congo with Louis, who was to act as his sub-agent.

The US commercial post in the Free State was then at Boma near the Atlantic coast, but Richard Mohun operated from Leopoldville, further inland.

Richard Mohun spent much of his time in exploration of the country's interior, visiting several areas where no white man had ever ventured and making a survey of the quality of the agricultural land and the crops grown by the native population.

Richard Mohun attacked and burnt at least ten villages before he captured the chief's son whom he threatened to hang.

In return for his son's life the chief returned the mail bag, alongside a second that Richard Mohun had not noticed was missing.

Richard Mohun was always conscious of his public image and wrote a diary with a view to later publication.

Richard Mohun was unable to intervene, in spite of his horror at the situation, as he had only a small escort and was heavily outnumbered.

Richard Mohun, who came under attack five or six times within six months, blamed much of the violence on Arab slavers who Richard Mohun claimed had directed the killing of all of the white men in the east of the country and allowed their bodies to be eaten by cannibals.

In 1893 Richard Mohun was appointed commander of the artillery attached to a Belgian expedition, commanded by Louis Napoleon Chaltin, sent against the slavers led by Rumaliza.

Richard Mohun had risen to the position owing to the illness of the original Chief of Artillery, a Belgian Army officer, and joined the expedition via the steamer Bruxelles sometime after it had started off from Basoko.

Richard Mohun accompanied the expedition to Bena-Kamba where the party suffered an outbreak of smallpox before 555 of the survivors continued on towards Riba Riba.

Around this time Richard Mohun led part of the expedition into a village where he disturbed a cannibal feast, he arrested the village chief who was tried and hanged.

Richard Mohun was with a force of 150 men sent over the stream to Riba Riba with the intention of reaching the town before the retreating slavers could give warning.

Richard Mohun's group burned the town to the ground before returning to the main party of the expedition.

Richard Mohun accompanied a force sent to investigate the slavers town of Romie and discovered it to already be in the hands of Congo State forces.

At Romie Richard Mohun encountered several of the Belgian native troops engaging in cannibalism of the dead Arabs.

Richard Mohun recorded that he fired a single shot which put an end to the matter.

Richard Mohun then marched 500 miles with the expedition to Kasongo, the former home of Tippu Tip, in January 1894.

Richard Mohun hoped in the process to intercept a slave caravan that had been fleeing eastwards from the expedition loaded with slaves, ivory and gold.

Richard Mohun discovered the confluence of the Luabala and Lumbridgi rivers and was able to disprove the existence of Lake Lanchi, which had been marked on many maps at this location.

Richard Mohun recorded that the soil in the valley was highly fertile, the local Barua people quite numerous and named two new peaks Mount Dhanis and Mount Cleveland.

Richard Mohun questioned the pair, garnered their confessions and sent them for trial after which they were hanged.

Richard Mohun continued his work to eradicate the slave trade, made several surveying expeditions, established new trade markets, and assisted in the suppression of cannibalism.

Richard Mohun estimated that there were 20 million cannibals in the Free State, and spoke of witnessing both a cannibal feast, and the practice of burying people alive.

Richard Mohun had remained US commercial agent throughout this time, and insisted on drawing no pay from the Belgian government for his services, though he did receive $5000 from the Societe Anonyme Belge pour le commerce du Haut-Congo.

Richard Mohun is quoted as saying, of the reason for choosing to assist the Belgian military operations, that "I prefer killing Arabs in the interior to killing time at Boma".

Richard Mohun received decorations from the United Kingdom and France for his work in the Congo.

Richard Mohun's stated priority in the Congo was to improve conditions for the inhabitants by bringing them within the Belgian sphere of influence.

Richard Mohun stated "we were all called upon to admire as an achievement of civilisation over barbarism" the removal of the Arab slavers but that "I believe the Arabs when they permanently occupied a country did a very great deal of good, much more than they will ever be given credit for".

Richard Mohun left the Congo and returned to the United States where he married Harriette Louise Barry from New York City and had his Congo report presented to Congress.

Richard Mohun was not replaced as commercial agent and the office ceased to exist in July 1895 - the next US government appointment to the Free State was not until 1906 when a consul-general was appointed.

Richard Mohun arranged a period of five minutes between his resignation as commercial agent and acceptance of the post of consul so that he could accept his Order of the Lion without contravening the US constitutions Title of Nobility Clause that prohibits those holding public office from accepting gifts from foreign powers.

Richard Mohun reported the outcome of the war and the safety of all American subjects to the State Department on the same morning.

Richard Mohun was concerned that the outbreak might spread to the white population and noted that vaccination doses had been ordered from Marseilles for the native population.

Richard Mohun named the young male Dijini and raised him in his house.

Richard Mohun returned to Washington six months layer, upon completion of his posting in Zanzibar, and visited his former pet.

Richard Mohun was contacted by the Belgian government, which had been impressed by his work on behalf of the United States, and was appointed a district commissioner in their colonial service in June 1898.

Richard Mohun accepted the position despite, just months before, condemning the region as a "wretched country in the heart of Africa".

Richard Mohun left Antwerp, Belgium for Africa at the end of August 1898.

Richard Mohun advertised among the Askari of Zanzibar for volunteers to provide the escort required by the expedition, and received more than one thousand responses.

Richard Mohun estimated that his opponents numbered some 1,500 men and claimed to have inflicted 300 dead and 600 wounded in exchange for 9 men killed and 47 wounded in his party.

Richard Mohun was said to have contributed much to the party's defence with his Winchester rifle and was reinforced part way through the engagement by three companies of native infantry sent by Dhanis.

In December 1900 Richard Mohun's family contacted the US ambassador to Belgium, Lawrence Townsend, to ask him to investigate rumours of his death which had been announced at a lecture in Washington.

Richard Mohun's party followed the river north to Stanley Falls where, after three years, the expedition completed the line some distance short of the Nile.

Richard Mohun is regarded as one of three Americans who played key roles in opening the Belgian Congo to outsiders, alongside Stanley and the missionary William Henry Sheppard.

Richard Mohun's second son, Cecil Peabody Mohun, who later became a stockbroker, was born in Brussels on March 27,1904.

Not wishing to embark upon another long appointment in Africa, Mohun wrote a request for employment to former US State Department official Thomas W Cridler, commissioner for the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition.

Richard Mohun suggested the inclusion of an anthropological exhibit featuring, in his words,.

Richard Mohun was unsuccessful and never received a formal position with the exposition, though his suggestion might have led to the inclusion of the pygmy Ota Benga and other African tribesmen as part of the exhibition.

Richard Mohun is believed to have written to Roger Casement during this time in an attempt to counter the accounts of Belgian abuses in the Congo that Casement was then compiling for publication in his 1905 Casement Report.

Richard Mohun enjoyed some success in this regard and devoted much time to an attempt to exterminate the tsetse fly.

Richard Mohun appears to have left Abir around the same time and was, in March 1907, proposed by the Congo Free State government to assume the role of African manager for the American Congo Company.

Richard Mohun was selected, in May 1907, by Thomas Fortune Ryan and Daniel Guggenheim, founders of the Forminiere company to undertake a prospecting operation on the Uele River in the Kasai and Maniema regions.

Richard Mohun was appointed chief of the Richard Mohun-Ball expedition when it set out in 1907.

In press reports of the time Richard Mohun was described as an ex-US Army officer who had been involved in revolutions in several South American countries.

Richard Mohun's convalescence included a period spent in the Virginia mountains.

Richard Mohun served as paymaster for the American Red Cross expedition aboard SS Red Cross sent in 1914 under command of Admiral Aaron Ward to Belgium carrying first aid supplies to assist those wounded during World War I Aged 50 and without any prior signs of illness, he died of a fever on July 13,1915.

Richard Mohun was a fluent speaker of Arabic and Swahili in addition to his native English.

Harriette Richard Mohun died on October 6,1942, in Stamford, Connecticut and was buried alongside her husband.