| WOODSON COUNTIES, KANSAS. | 155 cont'd |
ALEXANDER M. WRIGHT.
ALEXANDER M. WRIGHT, President of the Board of Education of Moran and a self-made and prosperous farmer, of Marmaton township, first located in Allen County in 1876. He came from Pike County, Illinois, where he was born September 10, 1852. He was a son of Abiah Wright, a Pennsylvanian, who went into Illinois early and settled a Pike County farm. He became one of the well known and highly respected citizens of his county and died in 1884 at the age of seventy-five years. He married a Pennsylvania lady, Catharine Fisher, who died in 1896, aged eighty-three years. Their children were: Elizabeth, wife of David Hester of Barton County, Missouri; Barbara, wife of Ed Bowers, of Pike County, Illinois; John Wright, of Pittsburg, Kansas; Bela Wright, of Barry, Illinois,
| 156 | HISTORY OF ALLEN AND |
John Wright, a prominent and prosperous farmer, of Carlyle township, Allen County, and Alexander M., our subject
A. M. Wright was educated sparingly in the old log school house of Illinois during and after the war and at about eighteen years of age he abandoned the "academy" to begin life's real battles. Farming is what he undertook then and farming is what he has continued. He was married in Pike County, Illinois, October 1, 1876, to Anna Blake. Jerre Blake, Mrs. Wright's father was an early resident of Pike County and went there from Maine. He married Almira West and was the husband of seven children.
The first two years Mr. Wright passed in Allen County were spent north of Iola on the Wizner place. His circumstances were most ordinary and it can be truthfully said that he was not far from poverty at times. To begin farming he bought a horse and borrowed another of his brother and his implements he borrowed from his neighbors. He paid $2.50 for a chain harness. His first crop the grasshoppers took and his second one drowned out. The third year was a good season and he started upgrade again. In the fall of '77 he bought a farm of sixty acres in the vicinity of Moran and January 14, 1878, he moved onto it. This he succeeded in paying for, and in 1881 sold, and purchased in 1883 the northwest quarter of section 24, town 24, range 20, his present home. It was a piece of land that had been entered under a soldier's Indian war land warrant by King. There was nothing but the soil there when Alex Wright took possession. How well he has accounted for his time in the past seventeen years his farm will testify. Cattle and horses have supplemented the earnings of his plow and sickle and he has reached that point at which it is a pleasure to live.
Mr. Wright's children are: Bela F., a student in Emporia College, Edwin, a junior in the Moran high school; Mina, who is in the same class, and Eva, a student in the same schools.
It is noticeable that Mr. Wright is interested in advanced education. He feels the need of it in his own case and since circumstances have so conspired to arrange matters favorably he is losing no opportunity to give his children these advantages. He has been a member of the Moran school board three years and his elevation to the chairmanship of the body is a compliment to his warm personal interest in education.
Pages 155-156, transcribed by Carolyn Ward from History of Allen and Woodson Counties, Kansas: embellished with portraits of well known people of these counties, with biographies of our representative citizens, cuts of public buildings and a map of each county / Edited and Compiled by L. Wallace Duncan and Chas. F. Scott. Iola Registers, Printers and Binders, Iola, Kan.: 1901; 894 p., [36] leaves of plates: ill., ports.; includes index.
