Scope and Content Note
The papers of Elizur Wright (1804-1885) span the years 1793-1935, with the bulk of the material falling between 1830-1885. The collection consists principally of correspondence, but also includes writings, scrapbooks, press clippings, and other material by and about Elizur Wright and Wright family members. The papers are organized into the following series: Correspondence , Writings , and Miscellany .
The earliest papers in the collection, 1793-1829, pertain to Wright’s parents, Elizur (1762-1847) and Clarissa Richards Wright, their neighbors in Tallmadge, Ohio, and older or more distant relatives. Elizur Wright, Sr., was involved with the Reverend William Hanford in the founding of Western Reserve College, and held one of its first professorships. From 1822-1826, Elizur Wright, Jr., was a student at Yale College; his letters home describe his education and social life, and his early career as a schoolmaster in the Union and Lawrence academies in nearby Groton, Connecticut. Wright’s 1829 letters to Susan Clark (1810-1875), his former pupil, discuss their forthcoming marriage.
Late in 1829, Wright moved with his young wife to Hudson, Ohio to accept an appointment as professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at Western Reserve College. There, with Beriah Green and other members of the faculty, he formed the Western Reserve College Anti-Slavery Society. Debate over the abolition movement ultimately split the faculty and prompted Wright’s removal to New York. He became active in the American Anti-Slavery Society, edited its Quarterly Anti-Slavery Magazine, and worked to raise funds, promote its lectures, and plan its 1833 Philadelphia meeting. Wright also edited the publications Human Rights and the Emancipator, and was in active communication with other abolition societies and publications. Wright’s correspondence in the 1830s reflects division within abolitionist ranks over the issues of African colonization and women’s role in the anti-slavery movement. Letters from Wright’s sister Lucy discuss the school she operated for the education and training of freed blacks in Cincinnati. Family matters also predominate, with the birth in 1830 of the first of Wright’s eighteen children. His letters to Beriah Green discuss child rearing practices in great detail.
As ideological differences continued to divided abolitionist ranks in the 1840s, Wright left New York and the Quarterly Anti-Slavery Magazine to edit the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society’s Massachusetts Abolitionist. Presidential politics and the annexation of Texas are frequently discussed in the correspondence. Wright’s growing family and financial obligations let to a variety of money-making schemes, none very successful. He translated and published an edition of La Fontaine’s fables, then traveled the northeastern United States from Massachusetts to the District of Columbia to promote and sell the volume, visiting anti-slavery colleagues along the way. An assignment to attend an 1844 anti-slavery conference in England as a correspondent provided the opportunity to pursue both interests. He promoted an invention, the rotary knitting loom, and “temperance life insurance,” offered to abstainers from alcohol and tobacco, through the New England Mutual Life Insurance Company, receiving written inquiries from potential agents and customers. Wright also published a weekly paper, the Chronotype. Relative Hannah Robie’s September 6, 1843 letter describes her visit to the household of Amos Bronson Alcott.
Wright’s anti-slavery activities continued in the 1850s (he was arrested in 1851 on a charge of aiding a fugitive slave), but continuing financial difficulties and his varied interests encouraged him to pursue other enterprises. He patented, and worked to promote, a “stop-cock” water valve. Continuing to publish the Chronotype, Wright used its pages and his wide correspondence to advocate spelling reforms and an end to dishonest and unsound practices in the life insurance industry. On commission from the New England Mutual Life Insurance Company, Wright prepared actuarial tables that would enable insurers to ascertain their policies’ current value and the amount of reserves necessary to cover them. Wright later published his tables, and lobbied for protective legislation to require all insurers to maintain adequate reserves. This led, in turn, to his appointment as Massachusetts insurance commissioner. Family letters of the period discuss Wright’s increasingly atheistic views and his sister Clarissa Wright Burrell’s move to California.
Wright’s letters of the early 1860s are mostly concerned with his insurance and actuarial enterprises, and make only passing reference to the Civil War. Wright invented and patented the “arithmeter,” a calculating machine, and was appointed to the Massachusetts Commission on the Hours of Labor. Letters to and from Salmon P. Chase discuss Reconstruction laws and the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution. Family letters discuss the marriages of Wright’s son John and daughter Mary, and, with the birth of grandchildren, child rearing practices.
Wright’s correspondence in the 1870s reflects his involvement in the National Liberal League; the “free thought” movement, which advocated strict separation of church and state, full civil rights for all citizens, and various educational and social reforms; and his writings in the publication The Index. Wright supported woman suffrage but opposed its linkage with “free love,” according to one letter. He opposed the 1873 Comstock law. As an “elder statesman” of the reform movement, Wright received requests for historical information about the founding of Western Reserve College, the anti-slavery movement, and his personal reminscences. The family correspondence includes letters of condolence on the death of Susan Clark Wright.
In the last years of Wright’s life, his correspondence focused on activities of the National Liberal League, his biography of Myron Holley, and his involvement in the Middlesex Fells Association, a group formed to promote the preservation of a tract of forest land near Boston. He corresponded frequently with a Mrs. Lawrence, author of Tobacco, a tract criticizing the habit. The family correspondence includes letters of condolence received after Wright’s death in 1885.
The collection’s later correspondence chiefly concerns Ellen Wright’s continuation of her father’s efforts to promote conservation of the Middlesex Fells, and Walter C. Wright’s insurance enterprises. Undated material includes miscellaneous fragments, usually from Wright or family members.
Correspondents include Wright family members and Francis Ellingwood Abbot, Louisa May Alcott, May Alcott, De Robigne Mortimer Bennett, Catherine H. Birney, James Gillespie Birney, William Birney, Henry Browne Blackwell, William Henry Burleigh, Salmon P. Chase, Charles A. Dana, Joshua N. Danforth, William Lloyd Garrison, Horace Greeley, Beriah Green, Sallie Holley, Robert Green Ingersoll, Simeon Smith Jocelyn, Amos A. Phelps, Wendell Phillips, Albert L. Rawson, Gerrit Smith, Henry B. Stanton, Lewis Tappan, Theodore Dwight Weld, and John Greenleaf Whittier.