Richard Cordley (1829-1904) was an American author. In 1854, he graduated from the University of Michigan and in 1857 from the Andover Theological Seminary. In 1857, he preached his first sermon in the Plymouth Congregational Church at Lawrence, Kansas, where he remained as pastor until 1875. At the time of the Quantrill raid in 1863, his house and all its contents were burned, and he was one of the persons marked for death, but he managed to elude the guerrillas. Cordley was several times a member of the National Council of Congregational Churches. His works include: The Lawrence Massacre (1865), A Quarter Centenniel Sermon (1891), A History of Lawrence, Kansas (1895) and Pioneer Days in Kansas (1903).