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/5907.33.1.1.1.1.1/mb.ashx Message Board Post: You're welcome, Shirley. I am sure that all the Richard Wright Sr. researchers and descendants will want to help you fill in details about Mary Ann Wright's ancestry and will be very eager to have you join with them in filling in the blanks they have about her descendants. If you have the right Mary Ann here, you are joining a very large community of Wrights that is very well researched by a very active body of researchers. Herb Arkin's site is sort of the un-official/official website for this line of Wrights. Despite all the research on this line of Wrights there are still many little mysteries, like who are the English parents of Richard Wright, Sr. and whatever happened to Mary Ann Wright (b. 1818)? This possible descendant connection is exciting for everyone, even those of us not of the Richard Wright line. I myself am not of this line of Wrights, though historically there was speculation that Richard Wright Sr. of Rowan Co., NC was a descendant of a 5th cousin of my New England Wright immigrant father, Deacon Samuel Wright (1606? - 1665)[e.g., see George William Wright publication, "The Wright Family: Descendants of the Wryta Family of Bayeux, Normandy, to England in 1066...." publ. 1929]. Many modern day Richard Wright Sr. researchers had rejected that historical speculation on the bases of mismatches in children's names and birth dates, and other details, but more recently "Y" chromosome testing of multiple Deacon Samuel Wright male descendants and multiple male descendants of Richard Wright Sr. has conclusively shown that the two lines are completely separate. My Dea. Samuel Wright line was from Co. Essex, England back to at least 1424 and your Wright line is probably Welch in origin, if I understand correctly the current sentiment of the researchers who are working on gen! ealogy of the Richard Wright Sr. family. The English parentage of both the Dea. Sameul and Richard Wright Sr. lines is not known for sure, though the Dea. Samuel line appears to be much more likely to yield to research than the Richard Wright line has. The Dea. Samuel line has historically been believed to be from the Kelvedon Hatch line of John Wright, Lord of the Manor of Kelvedon Hatch a yoeman of Sir Richard Rich of the Ongar Hundred in Co. Essex England. John Wright, yoeman, was granted the right to bear arms in 1509, having been useful to Henry VIII in acsending the throne that same year. He became very wealthy in land and properties and bequeathed to his children many large estates in co. Essex, England. My immigrant father, Deacon Samuel Wright of Springfield and Northampton, MA descended from his third son, "Myddle" John Wright of Wrightsbridge, Co. Essex, while the Deacon's cousin, Thomas Wright of Wethersfield, CT descended from John Wright's second son, Robert Wright of the Moot House, Brentwood, Co. ! Essex. Thomas Wright's parentage is not in doubt, having been clearly documented on both sides of the Atlantic. However, the parentage of Dea. Samuel has been mired in controversy for over 100 years. No marriage docuements, no childbirth documents for his first five children and no understandable ship documents have been found to show from whence he and his family came in England before they appear in the New England records. All we have are his baptismal records. My research has focused on trying to sort out the fact from fiction and speculation over the Deacon's English parentage and see what can be done to document his English life before coming to New England. Unlike the line of Richard Wright, Sr., our line had the great fortune of being part of one of the families that were prominent in the establishment of a major enterprise in England, the Massachusetts Bay Company. The Deacon's Uncle, Nathaniel Wright, was one of the eighteen assistants who joined together with Winthorp in petitioning the King for the Company charter and establishing its governance during the intial years of its existance. So, there were lots of documents referring to this Co. Essex family that inevitably led researchers to a deep enough investigation of the correct family so as to come up with probably candidates for the Deacon's parents. Though the initial speculations were a bit off the mark, at least we had the correct family group to research. There does not appear to be any such wealth of documentation either in England or in NC records that would lead researchers back to the correct family group in England for Richard Wright Sr. This is likely to remain a burning question for researchers of his line for a long time to come. So, you are trying to connect your family to a very active group of genealogists who can help you with Wright family information far more than I can. I just wanted to make sure you found this site and the researchers that are associated with it quickly because there is a lot of crap genealogy information out there about the Richard Wright Sr. family that you could get sucked into wasting your time on. Good Luck and God Bless you endeavors, Mike 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.