William John Wright

Life

William J Wright lived in Wayne, Pennsylvania for many years, raising a family there and working for the Treasury Department. He stayed in the same house until he fell from a ladder at age 88 while painting it, after which he moved to a retirement home, and he died there at age 94.

Origin and Recollections

His history was a family mystery until recently, because he would not discuss who his family was even to his children and grandchildren. When I visited him at the retirement home during the last years of his life, my father asked him once again about his family; the response was that he was one of four children, and his father had been a doctor "from England", and that he was "kind of the black sheep of the family". My parents had some sense that it was because of his choice of wife, but that was all.

Family research, and an old labeled photograph, has somewhat cleared up the mystery. It turns out that William's mother's name was Estelle, according to the photograph of the two taken together at some point. And that led to the discovery, via census records and other means, that his father was Dr. Albert Wright, which fit perfectly, except that he wasn't English. But it is clear that this is the right family, and clearly my grandfather had meant that his family was of British descent.

And they clearly are; this is a prominent family in the southern New Jersey area, with connections to the Inskeeps of Revolutionary War fame, and to the Peacocks that have connections to British nobility. So I can now hypothesize that my grandfather's choice of wife -- my grandmother Ella May Snyder, who was the joy of his life until her death in 1965 -- might indeed have been a problem for such a family, since she was of mixed Irish and German descent and was likely to have been raised Catholic. That would be a silly impediment today, but in 1905 it would have been huge.

At any rate, my grandfather was kicked out of his family before his father Albert died in 1905 (according to the 1905 New Jersey census). He then moved back in with his mother and siblings, shown here in 1910:

• https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MG7D-BP8

Later, after marrying, he moved in with his widowed mother-in-law, as we can see here, until his first child was born:

• https://www.myheritage.com/research/record-10133-191222587/william-...

The really humorous part about all of this is that the family stories William was told were all pretty much wrong in the first place. William's mother was descended largely from Huguenot ancestors, with some German and Swiss as well. William's father had a mother descended in part from English nobility and prominent Quakers, but his father's father was from Northern Ireland and had misled everyone and apparently told them he was descended from the first Wright settlers of New Jersey.