Background on John and Samuel Wright
The brothers John and Samuel Wright were seventh generation descendants of Samuel Wright, one of the first English settlers of Northampton, Massachusetts. After the John Pynchon financed the purchase of land on the west side of the Connecticut River valley, the first Samuel removed from Springfield to Norwottuck, the settlement that would become Northampton in 1655 or 1656. A farmer who hired out as a laborer or teamster, Samuel Wright appears in Punchon's account books for "carrying from my house to the foot of the falls 44 bushels of wheate...[,] 1 day at the mill...[,] Reaping and carrying Indian [Corne]."1
The seventh generation John (b. ca.1782) and Samuel (b. ca.1788) did not stray far from the original Samuel, by either geography or occupation. Still largely an agricultural community in the years after the American Revolution, Northampton was connected by a strong network of trade and kinship between area households.2 The Wrights listed themselves as farmers in censuses throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, yet farming in this New England family-based economy was never the sole occupation: farming implied a cooperative effort by the whole household, women and children, including home manufacture of goods for trade, the exchange of labor between households, and an extensive, often informal trade in other goods and services. While households could be said to be relatively independent, they were seldom self-sufficient.3
An increase in commercial activity in the early decades of the nineteenth century and the rise of industrial activity gradually transformed the region, and as the shire town of a recently divided Hampshire County, Northampton played a central role in an economy that stretched from the hill towns to the west, out into Hadley, Amherst, and Pelham to the northeast, and Granby, South Hadley, and Ware to the southeast. Increasingly, success in this social and economic world required flexibility in work life, and diversification of sources of income and exchange. Well situated economically and socially, the Wrights expanded from farming into a substantial business hauling freight, or as described in the Hampshire County Registrar of Deeds books, they were "joint partners in the business of common carriers."4
The Wright's family ties in the region were extensive. By 1810, there were seventeen heads of household in Northampton named Wright, most related to John and Samuel, if only distantly. By 1840, there were twenty six Wright households. Moreover, the Wrights had intermarried over the generations with other prominent families. Owning land along Bridge Street leading into the center of Northampton, The Wrights reaped the benefits of a building boom between 1809 and 1820, including the construction of a new church, county courthouse, town hall, and several store buildings.5 John and Samuel gradually increased their holdings in the rich and productive farm lands of the meadows that arced below Bridge Street along the Connecticut River.
In the early decades of the century, John (and to a lesser degree Samuel)M Wright forged a succession of partnerships to further his interests, including the firms John and Samuel Wright; Wright, Pomeroy & Co.; Wright & Edwards; and John and Edwin Wright. John wore many hats in his working life: farmer, freight hauler, laborer, cider-maker, Selectman, Assessor, Overseer of the Poor, representative of relatives in Probate Court, Guardian for individuals and families, landlord, and renter of horses, among others. For his part, Samuel centered his work on the farm, but he also engaged in freight hauling, laboring, and cider-making, especially in the 1820s. Edwin Wright shows up as his father's partner in freighting, and from the mid-1830s onward, he kept the firm's books and was principally involved in hauling freight locally.
The Wrights would seem to have had a virtual monopoly on freight hauling in Northampton during the first few decades of the nineteenth century, contracting with a who's who of merchants, businesses, and prominent families, especially those in the booming broom and palm-leaf hat businesses in Hadley and Amherst. The transition from turnpike to canal and railroad, however, had a large impact on the Wrights' business. Although the Northampton-New Haven Canal fell short of expectations in many regards, its completion in 1837 marks a shift of focus for the Wrights from distant routes to more local ones.7 By 1845, the arrival of rail in Northampton effectively ended the days of long-distance freight hauling by horse and wagon.8
The Hampshire County Register of Deeds shows the Wright brothers increasing their land holdings as their freight hauling diminished, adding lots, especially in the meadows. John Wright died of dysentery at the age of 88 in 1870, and his son Edwin followed in 1880, dead of cancer at the age of 70. Both were buried in Northampton's Bridge Street Cemetery near their homes and land. Samuel Wright died of cholera in 1880 at the age of 92 and was buried in Shrewsbury, Mass. All three were listed in the City Clerk's vital statistics register as farmers.
