This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Author: MichaelCharlesWight Surnames: Classification: queries Message Board URL: http://boards.rootsweb.com/surnames.wright/15387.1.1.1/mb.ashx Message Board Post: Hi Melinda, I am not surprised you knew a Mike Wright. There are over 30,000 living Mike Wrights in the US today. It is a name as common as mud. Might as well be Dan Jones or Smith. But Arlie Wright, now that is something that should stand out a bit in the records. I am not at all well versed in later day WV Wright genealogy and do not have any Wrights from WV in my database. All of my work has been done on New England and Ohio Wrights with some forays into the genealogy of early NC Wrights, most of whom are connected to very early coastal Virginia and Maryland ancestors. Your task would seem to be aided considerably by available census records, marriage and death records as well as living relatives whom you might try to contact if you have any of their names. If you have no names you might try writing to all the Wrights in an area you know they once lived. I once did a blanket mailing to every Wright in the three Northeast most counties of Ohio looking for some information on a particular relative of mine. What I got back was so much information it took me 6 months to sort it out! The trick to getting a response from this type of mailing is to be open and honest about what you are doing and pledge to not publish any information about living relatives without their permission. In my mailing, I enclosed two copies of a General Release form that contained a request for the respondant to list those bits of information or data that they did not want published. At the bottom of the form I wrote out my pledge not to publish the listed items, signed and dated both forms, and invited them to keep one copy for their records. Important Note: The author of this message may not be subscribed to this list. If you would like to reply to them, please click on the Message Board URL link above and respond on the board.