Pioneer Families - WRIGHT
Extracted From
Chapter XVII
Early history of the town of Hopkinton :
history of East Village (Nicholville) and vicinity,
diaries of Elisha Risdon and Artemas Kent,
soldiers of the Civil War,
genealogical record of sixty of the pioneer families
Carlton E. Sanford
Boston: Bartlett Press, 1903
[Transcribed by Dave Swerdfeger]
|
IN this chapter is given the genealogical records of many of the pioneers of the town, of all that I have been able to gather sufficient data and information to make a fairly full record. The preparation of these records has required much time, labor, correspondence, persistence and patience. Had I had in the beginning a full comprehension of the tedious labor required, I now feel sure I should not have undertaken it. That there are some errors in dates and possibly a few in names I am quite satisfied, since considerable of my information came from elderly people who wrote feebly and indistinctly. I think it will be readily understood, if the reader will bear in mind that it is in continuous order; that the first, second, third and fourth generations are each carried slightly to the right, and that each generation always has the same indentation. CALEB WRIGHT b. November 28, 1787, Weybridge, Vt.; d. November 14, 1839; m. Rosalinda Smith, February 15, 1813; b. February 25, 1784, Cheshire, Mass.; d. August 8, 1860. He was a son of Ebenezer Wright and Rebecca Staniard and was the eighth of thirteen children. His brother Asahel first took up the Risdon place in Hopkinton and went to Buck's Bridge, N.Y., in 1805, where he lived and died. Mr. Wright came to Hopkinton in 1804 and worked for Mr. Hopkins pretty steadily for a few years, according to his account with Mr. Hopkins. He first selected the tract where Jonah Sanford, Jr., long resided and died. The only people in that locality were a mile distant through the woods on the Potsdam road, and they dissuaded him, telling him there would never be a road through there, and so he gave it up, taking a hundred acres on the north side of the "Potsdam road," where he built a log cabin and his first child was born. He then built a frame house across the road where the brick house now stands. That house is now the tenant's house and stands on the site of the old log house. Mr. Charles Gibson had taken the hundred acres on the south side of the road and made a little clearing where the brick house now stands. Mr. Wright soon bought his betterments when Gibson went over and took up the tract where Jonah Sanford, Jr., so long resided. He next purchased the betterments of John Harwood in the hundred acres next west of his first parcel, and also two hundred acres north of this and his original lot. In addition to these he purchased a tract and also a farm in Canton and several hundred acres in Stockholm at sixty-five cents an acre. He was a man of great industry and must have possessed fine business abilities, since in those arduous times he became well to do, the wealthiest man in town. Had five children:
|