Richard Etheridge was born into slavery on January 16, 1842, the property of John B. Etheridge, a wealthy commercial fisherman and landowner, yet he lived in the Etheridge house, was raised as one of the family, and was taught to read and write despite its illegality in North Carolina. As a child laborer he worked alongside John B. Etheridge, learned the skills of a waterman, piloted boats through the shallow waters of the sound and the ocean inlets, and learned to read weather and tides, abilities that later served him in the United States Life Saving Service. After Union forces captured Roanoke Island on February 7, 1862, hundreds of escaped slaves arrived there and a Freedmen's Colony was established, with a community later called California, churches, northern schoolteachers, and instruction in reading and writing for young and old. After President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, allowing black men to enlist in the Union armed forces, Richard Etheridge and his friend Fields Midgett joined the Union Army in August, and Etheridge was promoted to sergeant and served three years in the 36th USCT Regiment. On September 29, 1864, Etheridge and the 36th, along with fourteen other USCT regiments, spearheaded the attack on New Market Heights just south of Richmond, Virginia, where nearly 1000 black soldiers were killed or wounded and where fourteen of the sixteen Medals of Honor awarded to USCT soldiers during the Civil War were earned. After the war, Etheridge and Fields returned home in September 1866, and Etheridge bought land, farmed, fished, married, had a daughter, served on the Board of Commissioners and the Board of Education, and in 1875 took his first job with the United States Life Saving Service at Bodie Island Station as Surfman #6. On January 24, 1880, he was appointed Keeper at the Pea Island Life Saving Station, becoming the first African American at that time to serve as Keeper in the United States Life Saving Service; when white surfmen refused to work for him and walked away, and the station mysteriously burned to the ground, Etheridge chose his own crew from black men in the service and the community and rebuilt the station. He remained Keeper at Pea Island from 1880 until his death at the station in May 1900.