Bio-Pen Pictures
SURNAMES:  VINCENT, WHITTLESEY, 

          Rev. James Richards Wright was born in Tallmadge, Summit County, Ohio, June 14,1814, and was reared there.  He attended the Academy of Tallmadge, and afterward Oberlin College, and graduated in 1839 in the college department.  He afterward studied theology privately with a Presbyterian minister at Elyria, Ohio, and was ordained a preacher in 1841.  He began preaching at Sheffield, Lorain County, Ohio, in 1842, remaining there nine years and then going to Ridgeville, Ohio, where he continued his sojourn eight years.  From there he went to Benzonia, in the northern portion of Michigan, where he remained four years, and then he was in Sheffield again for three years.

            He came to California in the fall of 1869 and located on his present place, in the Santa Cruz Mountains.  In 1873 he opened a summer resort for tourists and visitors, and continued in this business till 1887.  He built his house, called “Arbor Villa,” situated on one of the most delightful places on a mountain ridge 1,500 feet above the sea level, in 1877.  He has 134 acres, of which forty are in fruit-trees about sixteen years old.  His vines are of the same age.  The ranch was first started in March, 1868, by Elizur and William H. Wright.

            Mr. Wright was married, in 1844, to Sarah Holmes Vincent, a native of Boston, Massachusetts.  They have eight children:  Elizur, residing on the home place; William H., Superintendent of a canning factory in San Jose; Albert T., foreman of the canning factory; Henry W., in the real estate and insurance business in San Jose; Sumner B., residing in San Bernardino County; Frank Vincent at the same place; Lucy A., wife of Captain A. Whittlesey, of Portland, Oregon; and Clara A., residing at home.  They lost two children, Charles R., who died in 1876, aged thirty-one years, and James Frederick, who died in 1880, aged twenty-eight years.

Pen Pictures From The Garden of the World or Santa Clara County, California, Illustrated. - Edited by H. S. Foote.- Chicago:  The Lewis Publishing Company, 1888.

Pg. 302
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler
Proofread by Betty Vickroy

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