Richard Long, Jr. was born in June of 1837 in Ohio. Before the war he was a railroad agent.

Long enlisted as a sergeant in Company B, 26th Ohio Infantry Regimenton June 17, 1861. On October 14 he became lieutenant of Company K of the newly formed 73rd Ohio Infantry Regiment. On December 20, 1861 he was promoted to major. The regiment fought in western Virginia in early 1862, fought in the battles of McDowell and Cross Keys, and became part of the Army of Virginia in June of 1862.

On June 21, 1862 Long was promoted to lieutenant colonel. He took part in the Second Battle of Bull Run, after which the regiment became part of the Eleventh Corps and was assigned to the Washington defences, missing the Battle of Antietam. The 73rd’s Colonel Orlando Smith commanded the brigade as senior colonel through much of 1863, leaving Long in command of the regiment at the battles of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg (see regimental monument at Gettysburg.

On July 26 Long was apointed as Eleventh Corps Provost Marshall on the staff of Major General Oliver O. Howard. He continued in this position after the corps was moved west and transferred to the Army of the Cumberland, returning to the regiment in December of 1864. Colonel Smith resigned on February 17, 1864, and Long was promoted to colonel. On June 27 he resigned as unfit for duty due to a medical condition of “attacks of congestion on the brain which threaten apoplexy.”

Richard was married to Sally McLandburgh Long, who died in 1867, probably as the result of the birth of their daughter Sarah in the same year. Sarah died in 1883.

After the war Long invented the Long’s Truss Rail join and formed a company to manufacture and sell them to railroads. He was killed in an accident on April 4, 1889 in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania when he was run over by a locomotive.

Richard Long is buried in Grandvew Cemetery in Chilicothe, Ohio.