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Nancy Vinzant & Hiram Wright, Ohio 1827
This essay reaches no important conclusions. It is merely a record of research which I hope will be of use to other descendants of Gabriel Wright who are pursuing the same goal. Our starting point must be the same legend from the bits of family history contained in the story of British officers searching in North America in the period following the 1745 Battle of Culloden. Here is the version which I have in my notes, comprised of excerpts from "4 REVOLUTIONARY SOLDIERS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS" by Eloise M. Roberts
When the Wright family lived in Scotland the family name was "MacGregor" . . . and our ancestor was chief of the Clan MacGregor. As history shows this was one of the wildest, and to the English Government, one of the most to be dreaded of the Mountain Scots.
After many efforts to subdue the Highlanders, the Government offered pardon to all those Scots Clans of the Highlands who would agree to abandon their clan names and accept the name of Campbell. The Campbell's were of Italian origin, and though in cordial sympathy with the English Government were cordially hated by all the Highlanders. So much so that many attempts were made to murder Lord Campbell.
The offer of pardon was accepted by some of the Clans which had been very nearly destroyed by famine and guerrilla warfare, but most of them refused the terms, saying they were proud to live or die under the clan names. Among these were the Clans MacGregor, MacLean, MacLoren, Grant and others. There was nothing the left for the British Government to do but continue to hunt them down and kill them off. Rob Roy was one of the Clan MacGregor.
In the course of time came the great battle of Culloden, in 1746, in which all the Highlands took part with the Stewarts, the Roman Catholic side, and which resulted in disastrous defeat. The Clan MacGregor was all but destroyed and the Chief had to flee to save his life. The English, under the command of one Lord Leet, Leeth or Leith, made a diligent search for him. He managed to evade capture and reached the coast, took passage on some vessel and reached Ireland. He then took the name of "Wright", meaning a master workman and not long after secured passage to America.
Lord Leeth wanted this man so badly that he induced the Government to offer a reward for the capture of the MacGregor, dead or alive, preferably dead. Government spies came to America and hunted for him and they all bur captured him. He was found in New Jersey, still under the name of Wright. His family had followed him, and because the writ of attainder against all of them they were compelled to keep the name of Wright, as, if captured, all would have been taken back to England and beheaded. Lord Leeth's detectives were unable to prove this to be the remnant of the Clan MacGregor, and so could not arrest them, for the Colonies were very jealous of all rights which the British Government contended for, and this resulted in the War of Independence thirty years later.
The Wrights were tall, spare in frame, religious, stubborn, never ready to admit they might be mistaken and that others might be right....
About this passage I can make only two comments, one scholarly and one personal. The first states what every serious researcher already knows, that the British at Culloden were under the command of the Duke of Cumberland, who nowadays ranks as “among Britain’s greatest villains Most Hated of the Last Millennium” (https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/12445612.Butcher_Cumberland_among_Britain_apos_s_greatest_villains_MOST_HATED_OF_THE_LAST_MILLENNIUM/), and is better known as the Butcher of Culloden. My second comment about the long quotation from Eloise Roberts, is that her characterization of the Wrights as “religious, stubborn, never ready to admit they might be mistaken and that others might be right,” fits like a glove those whom I have known in my own family, starting with my mother and going
back to her great grandfather Elder Martin Van Buren Wright (1837-1914), buried in the old Black Cemetery in Stroud, Oklahoma. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/29952905/martin-van_buren-wright:
Two comments but several problems:
--What was Lord Leeth’s real name, correctly spelled? I have searched the North American newspapers for 1745-1800 and found no reference for him or for anybody with a name similar to Leeth.
--Likewise I have found no reference for a reward offered for information about Gabriel Wright, nor any reference to a Lord Leeth’s finding him, nor any to the journalistic hullaballoo which would have followed such an event.
I did find a scattering of articles about someone named Gabriel Wright, but the man’s circumstances did not fit the person I was looking for. Before leaving the newspaper databases, I should remark that I used only one--newsapers.com, which provides good coverage for the years in question. It should be noted, however, that newspapers.com is just one of several competing databases of old newspapers, and different databases may well produce different results.
Besides the newspapers from the 1700s, I had two other resources.
First by a long stretch of years and always foremost, I use the wonderful plethora of books available at archive.org. So many books have been written about Culloden and the Jacobites over the years, that searching archive.org is like entering a dark forest where as Dante remarked in the opening of the Divine Comedy, the right way was wholly lost. There are no signposts, nor does Vergil appear to guide the wanderer.
As a scholar who has lived in Japan for the past forty years, I may be allowed so say a word about Japanese university libraries. Compared to the great university libraries of North America and England, they typically have limited offerings. Their eclectic holdings are determined by what faculty members want to buy, and the result displays the lack of system in their acquisitions. Even so, I continue to use the library of the university where I am Professor Emeritus, and continue to feel gratitude for the many kindnesses extended to me by the staff. Also, as with the major libraries of Europe, it is hard for an outsider to acquire borrowing privileges.
Second, I have great libraries online--Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh, all of which are deservedly famous for the size and quality of their holdings, not to mention the awesomely erudite staff of librarians that curate them. Since I was looking for a Scotsman, I went first to Edinburgh, an event that happened only this present week of mid-May 2025.
There my chief find was a Ph.D. dissertation by Darren Scott Layne called Spines of the Thistle: The Popular Constituency of the Jacobite Rising in 1745-6 (University of St Andrews, September 2015). In terms of what I am searching for, this is a very promising work, but I have not yet had enough time to read it and therefore cannot comment.
Instead I will describe some other promising finds at Internet.org. Foremost is James Hunter’s 2001 book called Culloden and the Last Clansman. This is the story of the Appin murder, retold by Robert Louis Stevenson in Kidnapped. In Stevenson’s novel, the main character and chief suspect is Alan Breck Stewart, and this remains true of the non-fiction account. You can get an overview of the case at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appin_Murder.
Right now, Stewart’s case appears to have no connection with Gabriel Wright, but the similarities are suggestive. (Also see Stevenson’s Kidnapped, which is also about the Jacobites.) Even more similar is that of Alexander Kerr, a Jacobite born in the same area of Scotland as Gabriel Wright. You can read about him at WikiTree, a source that is much improved over the quality of entries I found when I first joined WikiTree some five years ago. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Kerr-7023
Researchers in North America are the objects of my envy because they can buy a copy of Culloden and the Last Clansman from AbeBooks.com for a price as low as $3. I could too of course, but I have to pay international shipping to Japan, which doubles the price of the book, and living as I do on retirement income I don’t have much change in my pockets.
A final request to the reader of this essay. Please excuse its pedagogical flavor. I have spent half a century teaching in university classrooms, and the old habits of edifying discourse die hard. In the present case, my intention is to instruct, so it comes naturally. However, I keep in mind the view of my daughter, now enrolled in a Japanese university and studying biology. She thinks I’m stupid and often finds occasion to tell me so. If you have comments, you may contact me in one of two ways. Either leave a comment in the space at the end of this essay, or look me up on FaceBook where my moniker is wpounds46. Either way, I’ll be very satisfied to hear from you.
Sources:
Pounds, Wayne. Tales My Grandmother Never Told Me. Kindle Books, 2024. Contains two stories about Elder Martin Van Buren Wright, the second relating him to John Brown of Harper’s Ferry fame.
_____ . The Autobiography of Mary Frances Earp: Memories, Reflections, and Dreams. Kindle Books, 2018. Mary Frances was the daughter of Martin Van Buren Wright.
Online
“Alexander Kerr,” born Roxburghshire, Scotland, 1694. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Kerr-7023
“Appin Murder.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appin_Murder. Accessed May 2025.
“Butcher Cumberland among Britain's greatest villains MOST HATED OF THE LAST MILLENNIUM, ” 27 Dec 2005. https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/12445612.Butcher_Cumberland_among_Britain_apos_s_greatest_villains_MOST_HATED_OF_THE_LAST_MILLENNIUM/. Accessed May 2025/
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