Joseph obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree from Trinity College (Connecticut), where at commencement exercises he addressed his fellow students, the graduating class of 1866, on the topic of "The Vicissitudes of a Nation's Literature".

[2] Richey was ordained as a deacon on May 23, 1869, at the Church of the Transfiguration in New York by Bishop Horatio Potter[7] and on September 17 of that year was received into the Episcopal Diocese of Albany.

[4] Soon after, Richey became one of the clergy of the Church of the Advent in Boston, of which the rector, Charles Chapman Grafton, was a co-founder of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, a high-church Anglican religious order also known as the Cowley Fathers.

Mother Harriet Brownlow Byron, their superior, dispatched Sisters Helen, Serena, and Winifred to Baltimore[12] to establish a community and "to do Mission work in Mount Calvary parish.

The Baltimore Sun reported that a great crowd attended the service and lined the streets; Richey was buried at St. John's Episcopal Cemetery, close to the grave of Mother Harriet.

In conveying to others the result of study, or in persuasion, he was not a brilliant orator; but in speech he was easy and self-possessed, and he gave an impression not only of the sincerity of his convictions, but also of the exactness of his knowledge."

Richey and Perry were sent before Bishop William Rollinson Whittingham on February 4 and 5, 1875, for "violation of their ordination vows and of the articles of religion" for offering prayers for the dead.

[20] Bishop Whittingham objected to Richey's use of altar lights, wafer bread, elevating the Host, making the sign of the cross, and praying for the dead.

"[3] A letter published in England's newspaper The Guardian describes him as "a brave American priest... he has left behind him as his monument in the history of the American church his devoted labors in Baltimore, his saintly life, his wonderful success in building up the spiritual fabric of the Church of Mount Calvary, and the many valuable agencies he has inaugurated... how many tears and prayers will go up before God for His brave soldier and servant, the young and crowned priest.

"[25] Hall Harrison, in his biography of Bishop John Barrett Kerfoot, said that Richey "so well known and so justly beloved in Maryland as rector of Mount Calvary Church, Baltimore, was himself of a frank, ingenuous nature, full of burning zeal, firm in his convictions, and fearless and outspoken in maintaining them.