Richard Wright

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Captain Richard Wright (by c. 1596–after 1668)

The origins of the immigrant ancestor Richard Wright are unknown. He was born by about 1596 and he died after 15 March 1667/8. [1] He had an unknown first wife. [2] He remarried by 1643. [1] He second wife was maybe a widow Sabin. [2]

Richard was a steward and he managed large estates for others. He farmed himself but preferred to lease farms, rather than buy them. [1]

Richard arrived in New England with the Winthrop fleet as an employee of Colonel John Humphrey in 1630 and settled in (Saugus) Lynn. [1][2] He brought with him his daughters Eleanor and Abigail, possibly other children, and a woman named Margaret, who might have been his mother. [2] He developed land in Lynn on Humphrey's account and was captain of the Saugus military company. [2]

Richard and Margeret were admitted to the Boston church in late 1630. [1] He was a deputy for Lynn on 9 May 1632 and he was a freeman on 14 May 1634. [1] On 1 May 1639 Richard Wright of Mount Wollaston, husbandman, leased the Braintree farm of Thomas Newberry, deceased, for four years.[1] On 16 February 1639/40 he was recommended to the Church of Christ at Mount Wollaston (now Quincy). [1] He was a commissioner to end small causes in Braintree on 7 October 1640 and 2 June 1640. [1]

Richard built a watermill in Braintree and was granted exclusive gristmilling rights. [2]

Richard went to Rehoboth in 1643 and he returned to England about 1646. [1] He returned to New England by 1649 and settled in Boston. [1] He went to Ipswich in 1652. [1]

Richard leased Twelve Mile Island on the Connecticut River (now in Hartford) from John Leverett between 1662 and 1666. [1] In 1666 he went to Podunk (now in East Hartford) with his daughter Sarah and her husband Thomas Harris. [1][2]

Podunk was a place on the east side of the Connecticut River above Hartford. Twelve-Mile Island was a farm on on the east side of the Connecticut River near the dividing line between the modern towns of Lyme (previously in Saybrook) and East Haddam (often called Thirty-Mile Island).

By September 1667, Richard had temporarily moved in with Thomas Burnham's family in Podunk. [GIH] He went to East Hartford by January 1667/8. [2] The last last known record for Richard is when the physician John Winthrop, Jr. gave him a prescription for "giddiness" there on 15 March 1667/8. [2]

Children of Richard Wright and his unknown first wife: Births in [1]

i. Elinor or Elizabeth Wright was born about 1621. She married James Clark about 1644. [1] James was the son of John Clark alias Kingman of Wells, county Somerset. [2] He died on 19 December 1674 in Muddy River (Brookline). [2]

On 29 December 1701 Elinor testified that she was about 80 years old, and as far as she could remember, she was about nine or ten when she came to New England with her father Richard Wright. [2]

ii. Ann Wright (probably) was born about 1622. She married Thomas Burnham by about 1645. [1]

iii. Abigail Wright was born about 1623. She died between 28 November 1702 and 31 October 1707. She married first Robert Sharp. She married second Thomas Clap. She married third captainWilliam Holbrook.

Children of Richard Wright and his second wife: Births in [1]

iv. Sarah Wright was born say 1643. The married Thomas Harris about 1664. [1]

v. Elizabeth Wright was born about 1644. She married Unknown Paddon in 1666. [1]

vi. Ann Wright (probably) was born say 1645. She married Samuel, the son of Henry Gaines, on 7 April 1665. [1] She died shortly thereafter at Lyme or Haddam. [2] Samuel was the son of Henry and Jane (Partridge) Gaines. [2] He was born about 1637 in Lynn. [2] He married second Hannah Burnham, the daughter of Thomas and Ann Burnham. [2]

Endnotes:

1. "The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England 1620–1633, Volumes I-III," digitized book, AmericanAncestors.org, originally published as: Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England 1620-1633, 3 volumes (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1995), 2073–4.

2. Gale Ion Harris, "Captain Richard Wright of Twelve-Mile Island and the Burnhams of Podunk," The American Genealogist 67 (1992): 32–46.

Revised July 13, 2023