Weitzal Avery Wright, my navigational star

Weitzal Avery Wright, this was a photocopy of it  that my mother made, I am h oping I will find the original.

I will refer to Weitzal Avery Wright a lot when working on this particular branch of my tree, not because he is necessarily the most important person but because his name is so easy to navigate. It is much harder to make sure you are following the correct person when you are working with a name like William Hill, or William Wright or William Taylor or John or Charles. When I do a  search I find so many persons with those names that I am never sure I am following the correct person as I get into the web of the tree, following cousins and in-laws etc, I just search back to Weitzal Avery and I know where I am again. He is the North on my compass.

So now seems as good of a time as any to really introduce you to Weitzal Avery Wright. The correct spelling of Weitzal is not known.He could not write and could barely read (he signed with an X) so I imagine his parents could not spell. Probably they did not have a spelling for his name. I find it in census and other public records as Waitsel, Wetsele, and Wartsell, Someone suggested in my cyberspace research that he most likely was named after Waightstill Avery, the first attorney general of North Carolina (you can get more info about him on Wikipedia). Avery County, North Carolina was named after Waightstill. He died in Morgantown North Carolina, presently in Burke County. That is about the geographic location where Weitzal Wright was born. While I am not 100% sure where the exact location of his birth was, Bakersville and Morgantown were mentioned as was Yancey County, Burke, Mitchell and Avery County, all which came from land that was originally located in Yancey County. This is why I do not plan to get into depth about these years, because I just do not know the geography and history of the area. I try, but never being there just leaves me confused. I use the Weitzal spelling of his name because it is what was on his final pension papers and was the spelling on his headstone, so I figure it was the preferred spelling of the family. He went by Waite.

Weitzal was born on March 4, 1840 (Waightstill Avery died in 1821 - side note: Waightstill Avery had a famous duel with Andrew Jackson where neither were shot, Weitzal had a son-in-law whose father was Andrew Jackson's first cousin).  On Wietzal Wright's pension paperwork it stated that he was born in 1834 but he filled out a separate affidavit that stated his birthday to be on March 4, 1840 the same day the president of the United States was inaugurated. He did not mention which president so I assume it was William Henry Harrison who was inaugurated in 1841. But does that mean he was really born in 1841? The 1860 and 1880 census estimate his year of birth as 1841, in 1850 year of birth 1840 and in 1900 year of birth estimated as 1835.

On the 1850 census, he was residing in Wise County VA with his family, as was the Taylor family. His wife Sarah Taylor, who he married in 1856 was also born in North Carolina so it appears that the families were close before coming to Virginia and that they moved together. Weitzal's older brother William Bailey Wright (1824-1885) was already married to Martha (Patsy) Caroline Hill, the aunt of Sarah Taylor in 1944. It wasn't until 1859 that another brother Jasper (1830 - 1908) married Sarah's sister Elizabeth.

William Bailey Wright, brother of Weitzal. Picture found on Ancestry.com

Okay, that is enough for today. There is so very much more to come.