Richard Cutts Shannon

Not many of his Century associates seem to have known of the singularly interesting passages in the life of Richard Cutts Shannon. Enlisting at the first call of President Lincoln in the War of Secession, he served throughout the conflict; being made prisoner at Chancellorsville and, when exchanged, arriving in a hired conveyance at Gettysburg just in time to join his own regiment unexpectedly on the field. After the war he engaged in business in Brazil; on the trip to which, in a sailing vessel, outbreak of illness in the crew left Shannon the only man able to take the helm. While he was introducing a street railway in Rio Janeiro the Brazilian government placed a “head tax” on tramway passengers. The competing English-owned company having decided to collect the tax on its street cars from every passenger and having begun to do so, Shannon announced that his company would pay the tax from its own revenues. The result was the tearing up of the English company’s tracks by a Brazilian mob and a published cartoon in a Rio newspaper, picturing Shannon on the front platform of his own car, surrounded by an excited crowd shouting “Viva el Americano!” It was said of him that, after returning to New York, he once walked casually eastward out of the University Club, remarking that he thought he would go around the world and return to the Club from the West; which he forthwith did. Mr. Shannon served in Congress a quarter of a century ago and for a time practiced law, he also acted long as trustee of his Alma Mater, Colby University.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1921 Century Association Yearbook