Sylvia Wright Field

Sylvia was one of the three sisters that moved to Spokane County.  Born 2 Oct 1872 she was two years younger than Marguarite and about 5 years older than Clarissa (Clara). Sylvia was born in Meeker. She married Oren Field on January 21, 1897. Oren was 29. On the marriage certificate it looked like she was 22 but I suppose it could be 27, since that is how old she would have been if you matched up the birth and marriage dates. But if you look at all of the census entries she was 22 when they married which would have made her birth year1875 born between John Wesley and Clara. They both resided in Spokane County when they married but the marriage took place in Yakima County They lived on a farm their whole married life. They did not have any children. Uncle Oren though was a family favorite (long before I came along). My grandmother named my father after Oren Field. But he was not the first to be named after Oren. John Wesley Wright brother of Sylvia also had an Oren. My father developed his love for music because of his great uncle Oren Field. I think he taught my father how to play the double belled Euphonium (like in "76 Trombones" from Music Man). Sylvia died 25 May 1939.  I really do not know anymore, but will keep you informed if I find out anymore.

The house of Clara Wright Carr Buck

Clara or Clarissa or Clara Belle or Clersey was my great-grandmother, daughter of Weitzal and Sarah Taylor Wright and sister of Marguerite. She married Charles Wilson Carr. Charles was born in Rulo Nebraska but his family moved to Kittitas County WA between 1880 and 1885. His parents were William Mitchell Carr (he was known as Mitch) and Mary Elsie Wright Carr. When I first started my genealogy I started with the Carrs. I had always thought that the Carrs came with the other Wrights because of it also being his wife's last name. I figured Mary Elsie was family to Weitzal Avery, only I cannot find any tie at all. We have the name of Mary's father, Elias but we know very little about him. He was married to Christina Folck who married shortly after he died to Charles Wickwire. Mary's brother Erastus was married to William Mitchell Carr's sister Sarah. Sarah filed widow pension papers for Erastus but was not able to prove his service. William Mitchell served in the Union Army of the Civil War, Company L, Iowa's 4th Infantry. This is a very interesting path to follow but I don't want to continue back much more because I really wish to move forward. Since William Mitchell Carr was buried in Cle Elum in 1893 I believe they must have lived near Cle Elum. Now I know that the Taylors had a homestead at Bristol which is just east of Cle Elum, so maybe the Wrights lived there also. Or maybe they met when Clara visited her cousins. I believe as soon as they were married they moved to Hillyard, once a separate community but now is in the middle of Spokane. Hillyard got its name because of the railroad yards and the founder/head of Great Northern Railway, James J Hill. Train maintenance seemed to be the main industry there. Charles Wilson Carr was a machinist for the railroad. As far as history for the area, the machinists went on strike in 1911 because there were a lot of immigrants that flocked to Hillyard so many non-English speaking men became machinist helpers. The machinists did not want helpers that they could not communicate with. I don't know the outcome of the strike. I guess I can sympathize if it really was about the language barrier.

Anyway, Clara and Charles had a house on Olympic that they either built or finished. It was a small house, and a very strange house. I know this because I lived in that house until I was about 9 years old. The house stayed in our family until I would guess the 1980s. As I said before, my uncle inherited everything from the family so he also inherited that house. I think he may have dones some remodeling. I am not sure. But when I lived there is was this random series of rooms. I will post, maybe this weekend some pictures of the outside and I think I have a few taken on the inside. I have this picture of Charles, Clara, Marita and Leslie (her brother and only sibling), that looks like it is taken in their front room. While it has similarities to the front room in the house, it definitely is not their house. I wonder if it was taken in the house or studio of the photographer? I am not sure I will ever know (will post that as well).

So I am going to try and descibe the house (a good writing exercise I suspect). The house, which is not very big is on a lot which is really tiny. You could barely walk around the house and still be on the property. I used to love the yard. It had at one time been landscaped so it had this flower garden space in the front, just a little part of the yard to the right as you faced the house. I cannot remember everything about it, I know it had holly or juniper and a bird bath. On the right side of the house it had just enough room for a narrow concrete walk to go from the front to the back of the house. The other side yard was a bit bigger but it had a cherry tree, a plum tree, I think an apricot tree and bamboo. I loved that side of the house because even as a young child I could barely walk through it. It was a real exploratory jungle.

In the back yard was the original garage, detached and in the far left corner. I don't remember much about it except that it looked pretty rickety to me, even then back in the early 1960s and that it was full of stuff. I don't know what kind of stuff because I rarely remember seeing the inside of it. My curious mind though always thought it was a great place. While I lived in that house my father built (or had built) an attached garage. He built it so he could put his print shop in it. As I was probably about 5 at the time it was built it seemed like a huge space, but it probably was not a very big space. He placed it so that you could enter  from the outside door of the basement, I think it was like a half floor down. The basement had this modern looking basement section with one big room. I always felt like it was our personal museum with old furniture stored in there, but not piled up, seperated enough that you could walk around it. The only thing I remembered specifically was an old radio around as tall as I was. I thought it was so cool.

On the opposite side of that room was the entry to the old part of the basement. That part was scary so I both loved it and hated it. It had this rock wall. The stairwell that came down from the pantry/kitchen area was wood and dark and curved against the stone wall, like an old castle, a scary old castle. When you reached the bottom of the stairs you were at the coal furnace that heated the house. I don't remember where the coal came into the basement. My mother's father owned a fuel business so coal shutes was something I paid attention to. But since it seems to me that was in the center of the house, I cannot for the life think of where one would get that coal in the basement, or store it. Needless to say I hated going into the basement from  that direction.

Back to the front of the house. The house had a wrap around porch that covered the entire front and about half of the left side. It went past the frontroom, bedroom, bathroom and stopped at the back bedroom. It had a door to that room with a big oval glass in it. But as most of the time that I have memory of that door, it had stuff piled high in front of it in the inside, so I don't even know if the door opened. Above the porch it had an overhang from the attic and a window. The window was boarded up on the inside and as far as I know there was no attic access. I suppose there had to be but I have no recollection of anyone ever going up there even though from the outside of the house it looked as if there should be a second story.

The front door had to be almost to the right corner of the house, but it always felt to me like it was close to the center. You stepped into a very nice formal hall as you entered the house. To the right in the hall was a piano which gives you some indication of the size. It had heavy woodwork in the house, I am sure it would be considered craftsman style. It had huge entrances to the diningroom ahead and the frontroom to the left. Both of those rooms had heavy dark woodwork, massive square columns, very much arts and crafts style. There was actually a door just beyond the hall to enter from the front room to the dining room so you did not have to keep going through the entry hall to get from one to the other. The back wall opposite the hall of the frontroom had a fireplace and builtin glass doored shelves on both sides. At the top of the shelves was the mantle that went across the entire length of the room. Above the mantle and the bookcases where small windows.

We had a large overstuffed camel hair sofa in the room that added to the formality and darkness. Both my brother and I thought it was scary, second only to the basement stairs. As we often came home after school to an empty house, it was not very inviting. At times though it was a great place to read.

The floors were hardwood and covered in oriental rugs. I think maybe even the hall. The dining room was light, but then it did not have a porch covering the windows diffusing the light like the front room had. It had a huge window on the outside wall to the right (of course it would be the outside wall). It had a window seat under that window. The room had a built in hutch at the back and plate rails around the room. The door to the kitchen was in the back, the door to the first bedroom was to the left.

Actually the door to the kitchen was the door to the hall that had the basement door to the left and the pantry to the right. I loved the pantry with all of its built in cabinetry. I think it had some glass doors in some of the cabinets, but I might be wrong, It had some counterspace but I cannot remember if it went all the way around or just in part of the pantry. I know it had counter or cabinets to the back so that it had builtins on three sides. I cannot remember if it was just open to the hallway or if it had a door. So now you pass the pantry and yo were in the kitchen. I think it was a rather small kitchen. It had two sides that had cabinets and counterspace. I really don't remember how much of each. The sink was against the pantry wall, the stove was to the left, where the basement door was. Straight back from the entrance from the dining room was a bedroom door. To the left, on the other side of the stove a door to the bathroom and on the back right side was the door to the back porch. Between that door and the bedroom was the refridgerator. On the back porch, which was screened in was the washer and dryer, maybe. or maybe just the dryer because I also remember the washer being in the bathroom or maybe both the washer and dryer. Okay, I was doing pretty good considering I was about 8 when we moved from there.

Alright. The most interesting room was the bathroom. The bathroom had three doors, one to the kitchen, one to the front bedroom and one to the back bedroom - remember the one with the outside door? The only way into that bedroom was through the bathroom, outside or through this closet that joined it to the bedroom behind the kitchen. Now I cannot think how this closet worked as far as in the footprint of the house. I think there was another closet in the right bedroom in front of the closet that joined the two rooms. Back to the bathroom. On the wall adjoining the kitchen was the sink. I think next to the sink between the bedroom door and the kitchen door was the washer and or dryer. On the other side of the front bedroom door was a good size claw foot tub. On the outside wall I think there was a high window but there was also the toilet that was tucked against the wall between the outside of the house and the back bedroom. If you were to go along the back wall you would find built in cupboards and drawers and then you are back to the kitchen door. Three doors that had to be locked if you wanted any privacy in the bathroom. Until I was 5 there were four children and two parents living in that house, two of the children were teenage girls. You can imagine how handy and private that bathroom was. If you missed a door you did not get to bath or use the toilet alone. Someone was sure to come in and it was just your bad luck because they were not about to leave again. I am not sure how that bathroom seemed when you were big but at 5 it was a long sprint to all of the doors.

So ends the tour of the house in Hillyard on Olympic that was built by my great grandparents. Growing up I always thought it was her second husband George that helped build that house. As far as I know my grandma Clara (or Mama Dear as she wished to be called) lived her entire adult life at that one residence. My grandmother inherited the house and I think both of her sons had a turn living in it with their families. I think probably we all felt it was our home, with squaters rights.

And so ends another entry on this history.

More on the Hutchinsons. Wanting to tell their story.

Today I was supposed to start a class on Nonfiction Creative Writing but the class filled up over the weekend and as an employee with a waiver I get the leftovers as far as seating. I was kind of anxious about taking the course anyway. I wanted to take the course to help me with writing the stories of these ancestors. I have learned so much that sometimes I feel I know them personally, but when trying to share their stories with someone else, I get the feeling I don't know them at all. I keep trying to think of what life was like, how they felt, how they spent their every days, what was usual, what was not. I think of Marguarite, coming from a family that were knee deep in Appalacian culture. I am not even sure what that really means. I have started the "Trail of the Lonesome Pine" because supposedly it was written about a branch of the family after the civil war. I find it hard though to get quiet time to read so have just started it. But from the snippets I have read around the relatives it was a closed and isolated society until the railroad came in. So I wonder if this family had a clue about life outside the mountains (or do they call them hills?). I am as ignorant about the Appalacians as I am sure they were about Minnesota and Washington.

According to what I have recently read, after the civil war it was not just about reconstruction and the Union Soldiers claiming the south. In the area where the north and south interwined with each other, like Wise County VA, it broke family and friends apart as some were Union and some were Confederate and a lot were like my family, starting on one side and changing to the other. I cannot even imagine what they went through. In some of the stories you can find on the Internet, in Wise county, the local Union soldiers were more like marauders then soldiers; raiding, pilaging and plundering. Killing just because they were sanctioned, no one to press charges. So I wonder how it was for the Wrights, Taylors and Hills after the war. Did the Taylors leave because of opportunity or was it personal, were they now less welcome where they lived? Did fighting for the union make it easier for them with reconstruction efforts or did anyone who came from the north treat all southerners as the enemy, slave owner sympathizers.

What I wonder about the most though is the family after it settled in the west. And back to thinking about Marguerite. All of the census and local records state that she was born in Virginia (or in some cases West Virginia) but I am not positive that she was not born in Minnesota. Always have to go back and look that stuff up. Some of Weitzal and Sarah's children were born in Virginia, some in Minnesota, but as her husband Richard Hutchinson was born in Mississippi, I think he liked that she was a southerner. If Marita is her daughter, like we always thought, and as Gretchen said was born maybe between the first two wives, did she have a  long standing affair with R A? He seemed to have a lot of political clout and money. Was he one of those guys that could romance a woman but was dangerous to be married to?

 Marge Womach posted on the Internet obits and information about the Hutchinsons who were buried in Mondovi Pleasant View Cemetery where R A, his father and brother and families were buried.  Even though Marguerite was buried in Spokane she was included in the paper, in fact there seemed to be more information on her than anyone, except maybe Richard Ashton. His last wife Josephine, who was thirty years his junior outlived him (surprise). Amelia, the first wife had a rather short obit. She died in 1891, or maybe 1893 because it has both dates on the data given by Womach. Said she left two minor children Margaret (Bessie?) and Ida. Wow, on Marguerite's obit it says she was the second wife leaving out the other wife that Gretchen found. What was so secretive about her?

 I grew up with the story of Marguerite being murdered, while sitting on her porch, a drive by shooting. But the newspaper account was that she committed suicide in her bedroom. Below is the account of Marguerite's obit etc. as posted on the Internet by Marge Womach:

Hutchinson, Marguerite Wright (2nd wife of R A; said to be buried here); {Edit: married 2-09-1895; died: 16 May 1915 in Spokane; d/o W A Wright; w/o Richard A Hutchinson) “Mrs Hutchinson Dead. Shot Self. Wife of Spokane Senator Long Sufferer From Melancholia. Tragedy at Home. Suddenly overwhelmed by a paroxysm of melancholia, Mrs Marguerite Hutchinson, wife of Senator R A Hutchinson, ended her life with a revolver at 8 o’clock yesterday morning in the family home at S1762 Grand Boulevard. Her condition was the result of periods of extreme suffering in the last three years, caused by a series of severe operations she was compelled to undergo, but against which she opposed so much cheerfulness and charitable activity that few outside the immediate family knew anything of it. Although she had been lately struggling under mental depression, there was no indication that the final breakdown had come when she entered her husband’s room Sunday morning and procured part of the paper he was reading. She exchanged greetings pleasantly and remarked that she felt much better than on the previous evening. A few moments later the senator and his son and daughter heard a shot. They found Mrs Hutchinson lying on her left side with the weapon at her finger tips. The bullet entered the right temple and death ensued almost instantly. Dr F M Hoag, a neighbor, was summoned, but could be of no service. Suffered Severe Nervous Strain. Under the influence of dejection resulting from pain and ill health, Mrs Hutchinson had several times intimated the hopelessness of living and she had been under a severe nervous strain the day before, but after a walk with her husband in the park seemed to have regained something of her usual spirits. Two years ago these attacks became noticeable while Mrs Hutchinson was in Olympia for the legislative session with the senator and the veteran legislator went through some of his hardest fights on the floor when he had been in attendance on his wife all the night before. His constant hope was that the best medical care and influence of a beautiful home would eventually restore her health. Came to Washington in 1883. Mrs Hutchinson was born in Virginia and her father, Wetzel A Wright, moved to Eastern Washington in 1883 when she was 13 years old. They moved to a place at the foot of Badger Mountain, in Douglas County, before the town of Waterville was founded near there, and although educational opportunities were lacking Mrs Hutchinson taught herself so well that at the age of 16 she was able to take charge of the first school in Wenatchee. Senator Hutchinson was a member of the legislature when they were married and in the 20 years since she has kept closely in step with him, attending the sessions except when it was necessary for her to remain at home and supervise their business affairs. To her ability and energy the senator assigns most credit for his success. Her literary taste, especially in classic poetry, has furnished the home with a rare library, and she managed to find time to exercise a marked natural talents for painting. Four Children Bring Wild Roses. One of the first tokens of sorrow to arrive at the home yesterday was a little bunch of wild roses sent by the children of an impoverished family Mrs Hutchinson has made comfortable through the winter. Her main efforts were devoted to children and she was particularly active in sending to country homes juvenile unfortunates who otherwise would have gone to the reform school. As a member of All Saints’ Cathedral congregation she served as president of the church home for children, and when ill health compelled her to resign that office she accepted a managing directorship of the institution. Although a stepmother to part of her family the children never realized it. Her charitable work, while constant, was performed in a manner that brought her very little public mention. The family had resided in Spokane since the senator retired from personal supervision of his Lincoln County farms years ago. Members of the family are Senator Hutchinson, his daughter Rachel and son Richard, who are at home; Mrs Marita Wales of Tacoma, Mrs Bessie Hayes of Portland, Mrs Ida Kemp of Duluth and Dean Hutchinson of Baker City. Mrs Hutchinson’s father is still living at North Yakima.” (Spokesman Review: 5-17-1915, pages one and six, and front page photo; contributed by AskALibrarian); “Hutchinson Burial Thursday. Spokane County Pioneers’ Association to Attend in Body. Funeral services for Mrs Marguerite Hutchinson, the wife of Senator R A Hutchinson, will be held from All Saints’ Cathedral Thursday afternoon at 1:30 o’clock, the Very Rev William C Hicks officiating. The Spokane County Pioneer who are members of the Pioneers’ Association will meet Thursday at 1 o’clock at the Willard Hotel and attend the services in a body, Senator Hutchinson is president of the organization, B A Eslick, the vice president, arranged for the meeting last night.” (Spokesman-Review: 5-18-1915; page 8; contributed by AskALibrarian);“Marguerite Hutchinson. Residence: S 1703 Grand Blvd. Female, white, married. Birth: Feb 9, 1870, VA. Aged: 45 yrs 2 mos 7 days. Father: W A Wright, born VA. Mother: unknown, born VA. Informant: R A Hutchinson , Spokane , WA . Died: 5-16-1915, Spokane , WA . Coroner’s Case. Cause: Shooting herself in the right temple with a 38 Smith & Wesson. Suicide. M B Grieve, County Coroner . Burial: Greenwood , May 19, 1915.” (WA State Board of Health: Certificate of Death).

So we have a son Dean who must have been from wife two, but a second wife before Marguerite was not mentioned in the newspaper. I think I have already stated somewhere in this blog that I have not found where they lived in Waterville etc (I thought was Okanogan County but I guess Douglas County). Did R A try to reinvent her background? Are we missing something, or was it just misinformation?  Of course it could be what everyone was told including R A.

Three of the Wright sisters moved to Spokane. There was my grandmother Clara, Sylvia Field and Marguerite. Joan Boomsliter (granddaughter of Nip) said that her mother would go by train to Spokane to stay with two if his sisters, I am not sure which two, and they would dress her up in modern clothing. She had the best times. It seems that at least two of the sisters were hell-raisers. Were these trips after Marguerite died? It just does not seem to me that this family could have a member that would commit suicide, especially with a gun and with her children in the house. If she loved children, how could she think about doing something like that where her children could hear and see.

The only persons I really knew from that family was my grandmother and my father (and his brother - but not so much) My grandmother Marita was a fighter and made the most out of life. She loved to tell stories, loved to do things that would embarrass other persons. She was a dumpster diver before anyone knew what that was, and before it was popular. My sisters said that she would find things in the dumpsters and give them as gifts and tell the receiver that it was a family heirloom. While I have lots of memories of her when I was a child, I left Spokane when I was 9 and did not return until I was 17. I was so impressed with her in her later years. When I came back to Spokane she was already in a nursing home. She had osteoporosis so could not live alone. But she made more out of living in a nursing home than anyone else I have ever known. She had her bed pushed in a corner to give her as much space as possible in the room. She painted and she made cloth dolls, the most impressive dolls with pioneer type clothing and bonnets on thier heads. She entered her crafts in the fair in Spokane and won ribbons. She had a little ice chest in the room so she could keep her own food. She was a printer by trade and so she started a newspaper for the residents of the home, announcing birthdays and visitors. She was the type of person when given lemons made lemon meringue pie. She had church members and boy scouts visiting her. My father was the same kind of person. He made life happy, he may have made others crazy but he never let life make him unhappy. So I cannot imagine Marguerite letting life beat her, not enough to shoot herself.

Hutchinsons and the difficulties in writing the story...still

Alright I thought that writing about the civil war years would be easy because there is so much, but trying to get the facts in order became, well difficult. So yesterday I finished copying and mailing copies of Following Taylor-Sutherland Trails, a 500 page self published book by Jane Owens. My cousin (granddaughter of Napoleon Wright) Joan Boomsliter sent me her copy of the book. It is out of print, well it never really was in print, but it is pretty close to impossible to find. And while this book is a massive magnificent work of genealogy, it is full of errors. Not that it is possible to write the perfect family history book since the facts conflict, and I mean those hard, documented notarized facts. Then you through in family recollections and it becomes impossible to even come close to consensus. So little was written down, and things like names were never officially spelled by the parent, census takers spell phonetically and I think it was a prerequisite for a census worker to be deaf because their interpretation of a name was a very scary thing. I don't even think being literate was a requisite. Its like what is your name? Mary? Okay, and in the box - X-, last name, Smith. Okay -X-. so now the record is X X. Okay, I will be more realistic. What is your name? Marie Smythe? Okay, that's Mary Smith. It is crazy trying to get accurate names and dates. But that is problems with genealogy 101. It just goes downhill from there.
As usual, I am off on a tangent. Let me get back to the focus of this posting. In the book (remember the book?) I had decided I would FIX a page of my close ancestors, page 128 because this is information I know well. Under Weitzal and Sarah, only 5 of the 7 children are listed. In real life Dicey Wright, married to Benjamin Franklin Boice is the oldest child. but on this page the first child listed is Margaret md to Ben Hutchinsen. Even though at times her name was listed as Margaret her given name was actually Marguerite, or Margaurete or one of many other spellings. Her parents called her Maggie. I don't know if that name stuck because Maggie is pretty plain and she did marry a man of distinction, Richard Ashton Hutchinson, not Ben Hutchinson. She was his second wife, the first wife was Amelia Johnson. He had, I thought, 3 children with the first wife, Dean, Bessie and Ida. Marita, who I was quite sure was Marguarite's daughter was born between Ida and Dean, before Margaurite and R A were married. In all the books it appears Richard Ashton the first went by his initials R A. His son, R A Jr went by Dick. Anyway I find yesterday in Washington (state) Digital Archives a birth certificate for Eva Ashton Hutchinson, who was the second child according to the certificate, of Marguarite Wright and R A Hutchinson. On the certificate it states that it was a live birth and legitmate. The birth date is Dec 22, 1895. Rachel's birthdate is Dec 22, 1896. So are Rachel and Eva the same person?  When Richard, Jr was born it stated that he was the third child of R A and Marguarite and there has never been anything said about an Eva in census data or in newspaper clippings. She could have died at a young age but you would have thought I'd have found something about that. Rachel died in California, according to the Spokesman Review she fell off a ladder picking cherries. I of course cannot find that information right now. Again, that is the reason for blogging to help me get all of this data and my thoughts in order.

I am really bored with this so I can imagine how bored you are. So let me just get down the general facts as I can think of them. R A Hutchinson was born in Mississippi. His father Dean (his brother was also Dean) was the first cousin of President Andrew Jackson, his mother was Elizabeth Hutchinson. They moved to Kansas or Colorado or both. Then they moved to western Washington and then eastern Washington. His first wife was Amelia Johnson, I know very little about her except she was the wife that went with him to Nespelem Washington. Nespelem was the major city within the Colville Confederated  Tribes Indian Reservation. It was where Chief Joseph (the Nez Perce "I will fight no more forever" Chief Joseph - only he had a passive aggressive personality according to the book "Half Sun on the Columbia" by Robert Ruby and John A Brown) and Chief Moses, who was sort of you can't fight them so you might as well try to survive using their rules. R A was the miller and store keeper for this town and the only white family to live in the community. The Indian Agent only passed through every few months so Hutchinson was the communicator, negotiator etc between the natives and the government. This part of R A was facinating and almost made him seem like a nice guy.

He bought (or homesteaded) a lot of land in the Spokane Valley which he parcelled out and made pretty good money as a land developer. He was a County Assessor for Lincoln County, and as the county split (Spokane and Lincoln county were one in the same originally) he became the assessor I think for Spokane. I have forgotten and am not going to look it up right now, the beauty of being able to edit. I don't know how he and Marguarite met, that would probably be a good stand alone story. She was almost 20 years his Junior. They had three children, lived in a good size house on the south hill right across the street from Manito Park. That was an old ritzy part of town. In Spokane there is a museum called the Campbell house in Brown's Addition. That is another ritzy part of town, an old settlement with mansions. The museum tells you all about life in the 1800s in Brown's Addition but I have not found the counterpart of that talking about the south hill. I am sure there was quite a culture to talk about there. R A Hutchinson was a state senator, I think only for one term.

I have no idea what the older children from his first wife did or what life was like for them. I don't think Marita ever found her happy spot but I could be wrong. She appeared to marry a loser the first time, Herbert Wales. The only thing I have found out so far before they were married was he was in the census (1910??) as a lodger. By the 1930 census, she was in California living with her brother's mother in law, Teresa Kennedy, his sister-in-law and his two children at his widowed mother in law's house. In that census it said teresa Kennedy's house was valued at $15,000. Not too shabby for 1930. Marita Hutchinson Wales was now divorced.

Rachel Ashton Hutchinson married William McCreay and I cannot find anything about him. All I know about their life was that as I mentioned before, her death as a result as a ladder fall picking cherries. I don't know if she was married, widowed or divorced at the time.

R A Hutchinson Jr. became the vice president (or president) over International Operations of Studebaker. He lived a good hunk of his life in Brussels Belgium and as my grandmother, his first cousin, also named Marita was fairly close to him. She always drove a studebaker given to her by him I remember her last studebaker was a small white wagon with tan interior. I tried looking on the Internet to find something like it but I did not have any luck. I thought it was a 1968 but since they stopped making them in I think 1963, it must have been an earlier model. My uncle inherited everything from my grandmother (as my father had already passed away) and so in the vehicles last days my cousin drove it, I last saw it in 1974. Anyway, from the 1930 census I know that Dick also had a son by the name of R A and another one by the name of Jack.

This was from the International Division of Studebaker newsletter. There were many pictures of R A. I have the pages with his picture but no dates, of course.

The Civil War Years part 1

I have been away from my blog, not from lack of interest but because it is really hard to know how to start putting this together. I have so much information, but so many holes at the same time. And as with everything else there is so much missinformation. I don't know even the names of the Hills and the Taylors as well as I do the Wrights. And even covering just the Wrights would be a career move. Weitzal had six brothers and two sisters. So that is seven boys who probably all had war records. In addition to being in the civil war, a lot of them spent some time on each side. Weitzal, Aaron W, and Jasper (maybe Neil or A. for middle name) all enlisted in 50th Regiment, Virginia Infantry; Solomon H. and William Bailey Wright both enlisted in the 21st Regiment, Virginia Cavalry. Both of these regiments were Confederate Units. I don't know if John B and Thomas was in the Confederacy at all. There was almost 100 John Wrights in Virginia regiments alone but only 28 Thomases. And just because 5 of the brothers started on the confederate side it does not mean that they all did. I know both Jasper and Weitzal enlisted in the Union Army. I know that Jasper fought at Fort Donalson, a Confederacy disaster. Every may was either killed, wounded or captured. Jasper was wounded, hospitalized and released. A lot of what I know, but by no means all, of their war record came from the book "Between Brothers: Civil War Soldiers of Wise and Dickenson County"  by Lillian Gobble and Rhonda Roberston. It is also very flawed but there are accounts I like to believe are true. They quoted... to be continued.

Righting the Wright Connection

Okay, I have been at this blogging experience for about a week and I am finding myself getting impatient to get moving into the things I really know. But it is important to set some background first. I started my membership in Ancestry.com I believe about one and a half years ago. It was a typical start, I wanted to look something up and Ancestry so nicely offers you a two week free trial so of course I accepted and of course I forgot to cancel after my free trial and had the automatic account deduction that paid for a year subscription. Well, now that I had financially invested I had to get my monies worth or is it money's worth. Doesn't matter. For those of you who have paid their way into Ancestry.com you know that for what seems like a lot of money you can have access to this huge world of United States records and data. For more money than I could justify in this life time I could add to that the world data. On my mother's side, my ancestors go back to the old country very quickly. My great grandparents were all immigrants so for now, my mother's genealogy is ignored, waiting for the day that I feel I have exhausted the US files and must move on to the old countries or I win the lottery, inheritance from a long lost uncle or this blogging suddenly makes me a wealthy woman.

Now my father's side, that is a different story. I have gotten very few of his lines back to the country of origin. I am not sure in my lifetime I will ever get back far enough to feel I have satisfactorally found my roots. So for now I can stay busy in US documents.

 I was so excited when I started in Ancestry.com, all of these lines finished to way back when completed on other trees, relatives available just for the picking. I followed the trails, adding long lines to my family tree like a squirrel gathering nuts. Only it was not really like a squirrel, more like lemmings following blindly right over the edge. I now had built a family tree full of misinformation. I had thought there was some sort of control, as if there was some wise wizard making sure that the data was real and accurate. I started contacting some of the owners of the trees I had connected with to find that they had no idea where researcher zero was, the original poster of the data and where the verifications were. So I have been having to go back and correct the wrongs. I think I have more mistakes then I have actual relatives on my family tree. I have been tempted to dump it and start over but have been afraid of permanently losing important finds. So as my first word of wisdom - do not blindly go into that grove of trees and start picking. Ask questions, do some research on your own and try to add quality for others to follow. Hopefully that will be exactly what my tree will become. But for now even if you pair up with my data, tread cautiously and ask questions.

My first faux pas from gathering bad data: I followed the Carr line which connects to the Wright line with Weitzal's daughter Clara (Clarissa). I found this branch that connected back to Nicholas Rice, a Revolutionary War patriot and an active geneology family. I was elated. I had family. I belonged somewhere. Only the connection had a wrong turn at William Mitchell Carr. This was the lineage of a different William Carr - what did I tell you about those Williams, it is so easy to start following a crossed line because of similarities in age and birthplace. Anyway, I had contacted the Daughters of the American Revolution to see about joining. They in turn got me in contact with Betty, the reasearcher for the Tri-Cities Washington branch who was to help me verify my line. She,  who was the best part of all of this since she has helped me so much in understanding how to do genealogy, found the error. My actual Carr lineage was just as exciting, but it stopped just short of being able to find the patriot so did me no good as far as joining the DAR. Betty then asked me to look at another line which is how I started getting so involved with this Wright-Hills-Taylors.

The line on ancestry.com goes from Weitzal, to Jonathan Wesley Wright to Solomon Wright. From Solomon it leaves North Carolina and picks up in Pennsylvania amongst the Quakers. With Solomon in North Carolina we do not have a name for Jonathan Wesley's mother and there is not a complete sibling list. But we know that Swinfield Wright and Solomon Wright (and others but that is where I will stop for now on this posting) were brothers of Jonathan Wesley. Negetha Gourley Powers connected a Solomon Wright in Pennsylvania with the Solomon Wright in North Carolina in her book the Wright Connection. She did have a bit of a caveate in that it is possible that this was not the right Wright, but it seemed the world that was connected to Jonathan Wesley Wright wanted to accept this as fact. The PA Quaker Wright had this wonderful history that went back to William Penn through John Scarborough, to the Pickerings of Salem MA, There were Virginia colony connections and Puritans. It was a cornicopia of American lore. I was part of history. And then, the shoe fell. Damn those DAR women and their need for proof. Betty is good at her job. With just a quick contact and $80 in fees she was able to disprove the Wright Connection. It sits there so easy to access at Burke County Historical Society in Pennsylvania; the family bible, the Quaker Meeting Minutes. the will. Solomon Wright, Quaker, died in Pennsylvania, they have records and gravesites. He did not have a son by the name of Swinfield. He had a son named John but not Jonathan.  His children were born, lived and died in Pennsylvania, not in North Carolina. So I had to greive the loss of so many generations of family history. I had to give up on the dream of being part of the founding fathers and accept that yes, I am a hillbilly.

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.