William Howard Russell Brompton Cemetery, London. He married twice. His first marriage was to Mary Burrows, of Irish origin. After her death in 1867, he married Countess Antoinette Malvezzi, an Italian. They remained married until his death. Russell's dispatches via telegraph from the Crimea remain as his legacy; for the first time he brought the realities of war home to readers. This helped diminish the distance between the home front and remote battle fields. Russell's war reporting (often in semi-verbatim form) features prominently in Northern Irish poet Ciarán Carson's reconstruction of the Crimean War in "Breaking News" (2003). His biography was written by
William Hepburn Russell River. Acting as the firm's representative in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and New York City, Russell lobbied for contracts with the War Department as well as for financing from banks and other sources. With a virtual monopoly on all western freighting contracting Russell, Majors, and Waddell became the largest freighting company in western Missouri. In July 1858, the Pike's Peak Gold Rush started when Green Russell and Sam Bates found a small amount of gold in Colorado. William Russell was in Leavenworth, Kansas when he heard the news. Believing that this gold rush was the start of heavy emigration to the