The Wright Family
The Forbears of Jane Elizabeth Wright
Jane Elizabeth Wright's father was John Saunders Wright who was baptised in the parish church (pictured on the left) at Broughton in Huntingdonshire in March 1826. As you can see from the Wright Family Tree, his paternal grandparents were John Wright and Mary Stokes. John and Mary were married at Hartford in Huntingdonshire on 1 November 1791. The Hartford parish registers show that at the time of their wedding, John and Mary were a bachelor and spinster respectively and each signed the certificate with a 'cross'. The wedding was witnessed by Edward Stokes and Edward Afford.
John Saunders Wright's father, John Wright, was baptised at Hartford in Huntingdonshire on 15 September 1795 and married Elizabeth Saunders there on 6 May 1816. The couple then went to live in the nearby village of Broughton where they had six children: William (baptised on 21 September 1817), Joseph (9 January 1819), David (22 July 1821), Thomas (27 April 1824), James (27 April 1824) and John Saunders (12 March 1826).
John Wright died and was buried at Broughton on 2 October 1825, a few months before his youngest son, John Saunders Wright, was born. It seems that Elizabeth had a further child after John's death. The parish transcripts for Broughton show that a Sarah Ann Wright, the daughter of Elizabeth Wright, 'a single woman and widow', was baptised there on 13 Oct 1833.
John Saunders Wright married his cousin Sarah Bodger at Grafham in Huntingdonshire in England on 28 February 1848. He was a bachelor aged 22 years and she a twenty year-old spinster. Both were said on the wedding certificate to be labourers where he lived in the adjoining village of Warboys and she in Grafham itself. The marriage was witnessed by Sarah's brother, James Bodger, and Elizabeth Eynsby where all signed the certificate with a 'mark'. Jane was born at Grafham in Huntingdonshire in 1828. Her father was Charles Bodger (who was born in Kings Ripton in Huntingdonshire in 1797) and her mother was Jane Wright who was born in Hartford in 1803. More on Sarah's family is given at The Bodger Family.
After their marriage, John Saunders and Sarah Wright lived at Broughton where their eldest daughter, Jane Elizabeth Wright, was baptised on 7 September 1849. The family was still at Broughton at the time of the 1851 census and had living with them a 56 year old widow, Mary Hunter, who was a nurse and former school mistress. The following year saw them leave Broughton and emigrate to the colony of Victoria. Click here to read about their life and times in Australia.
John Saunders' Siblings
John Saunders Wright had five brothers we know of: William, Joseph, David and the twins Thomas and James. He also had a half sister, Sarah Ann, who was born in Broughton in 1833 and probably died there in 1838. A brief overview of his brothers' lives is given below. The details supporting these stories are listed in my Rootsweb site for the Wright and Bodger families.
- William Wright (1837- )
William was baptised at Broughton in September 1817. A William Wright and Martha Sisman were married in Broughton in 1837 and may have emigrated as we have not been able to find them in the censuses (the only William and Martha Wright found were both born in 1815 at Great Gidding and Old Hurst respectively).
Joseph Wright (1819- )
Born in Broughton in 1819, Joseph worked as a cordweiner. In 1851 he was living at Broughton with his wife Elizabeth, a grocer, and sons James (9) and John (3). Living with them were two apprentices, Nawser Bedford and Sarah Bodger's younger brother James. Sometime between 1851 and 1861 the family moved to Eversdon. Joseph and Elizabeth had five children we know of: James, John, John, Emily and Matilda.
David Wright (1821- )
David was born at Broughton in 1821. He married Mary Ann Hubbard there in 1843. They had nine children all born at Broughton: Fanny Wooley Wright (who was working as a servant in Islington in 1861), Elizabeth Saunders, Mary Anne, David William Hubbard, Lavinia, Mark, Nathan, William Hubbard and Ruth (who was born in 1864). Mary Ann Wright (nee Hubbard) died sometime between 1864 and the census year 1871 which showed David (a 50 year-old widower) living at School Lane Broughton with David (21), Mark (17), Nathan (14), William (11) and Ruth (7). The 1881 census shows that David had remarried to an Elizabeth Unknown.
Thomas Wright (1824-bef1891)
Thomas was born in Broughton in 1824 and married Elizabeth Woodward there in 1848 (Eliza came from Hartford in Huntingdonshire). The couple appear to have lived all their lives in Broughton where they had twelve children: Alfred, Frances Saunders, Walter Thomas, Frederick, Esther, Charles, Amy, Selina, Harry, George, Abraham and Alice. One of Thomas and Elizabeth's descendants, Geoff Wright, tells us that two of their children, Walter and Frederick, moved to Allerston in Yorkshire. Walter Thomas Wright married Elizabeth Coates there in 1871. The censuses show he worked as a farm labourer and later a farm foreman and that he and Elizabeth had five children: Frederick, Clara, George, Sidney and Esther. They also suggest that Elizabeth died between 1891 and 1901 and that Walter remarried and went to live in Pickering in Yorkshire.
Geoff's great grandfather, Frederick Wright, married Sarah Hudson at Allerston in Yorkshire on 21 December 1875. Geoff tells us that Frederick met Sarah at an agricultural fair where she 'was working as a waitress'. She was born on 16 May 1841 at Stamford Bridge just outside York (and where the army of England's King Harold defeated norse invaders before marching south to confront William the Conquerer at the battle of Hastings). Geoff continues that 'Sarah's father did not like Frederick so the newly weds lived in farm accommodation in Allerston'. They had five children including Geoff's grandfather Frederick Charles Wright who was born at Allerston in around 1889. Frederick Charles married Hilda Dobson at Hackness in 1908. According to Geoff, Frederick met Hilda at Scarborough in Yorkshire. She 'was on a day out with her friends from Suffield Cum Everly (a farming parish)...they fell in love and got married almost immediately'. He adds that 'either there was no room for Hilda at Frederick's parents' house, or his dad did not like her'. Whatever the reason they took a cottage on Main Street in Ebberston where Frederick worked as an agricultural labourer and Geoff's father, George William Wright was born in 1911. Frederick Charles was eventually made redundant by farm mechanisation and he and Hilda moved to Stourton on the outskirts of Leeds in West Yorkshire ('a horrible, smelley, smokey place'). Geoff's father George William Wright married Jennie Proctor in 1953.
According to Geoff, Walter and Frederick's sister, Esther Wright met her future husband, a railway porter named Charles Smitten, at the Scarborough railway station. They were married in 1878 and Esther followed Charles about the countryside, having eleven children in the process: Emma Florencee (born at Carlton Scroop in Lincolnshire in 1879), Alice (1882, Sutton Bridge Lincolnshire), George E. (1884, St Mary's Leicester) and eight children in Bardney in Lincolnshire: Ellen (1885), Albert E. (1887), Annie (1890), Maud (1891), Harry (1891), Percy (1893), Runey (1895) and Ethel (1897). The UK census data shows Walter and Frederick's younger brother, Abraham Wright married Rachel Smith in 1892. In 1901 he was living in Broughton in Huntingdonshire with his wife and two daughters, Winifred and Beatrice.
James Wright (1824- )
Thomas' twin brother James married Sarah Storton from Fenton in Huntingdonshire. We know from the census that they were living at Broughton in 1851, and that they had at least four children: Thomas, Amy, Eliza Maria and Sarah Ann. We have not as yet found James and Sarah in subsequent censuses although we have found some of their children. The 1861 census shows, for example, a Maria Wright (11) and her sister Sarah Ann Wright (9) at Main Street Pidley cum Fenton with their grandmother Elizabeth Storton, a 71 year-old widow and former agricultural labourer's wife who had been born at Colne in Huntingdonshire.
Image source:
Broughton Parish Church, private collection
