Low Down Articles
Echoes from the Past
Article 110 of 111
This article first appeared in the "Echoes from the Past" column of the The Low Down to Hull and Back News.
Reprinted with permission. Search complete list of Low Down Articles.
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Wright Documents - continued
In the Wright collection, which I now believe belonged to Ruggles, there were no less than sixteen mentions of our dark friend London Oxford. On one occasion he was engaged, with a white partner, to cut a certain number of staves from local timber and to stack them on board a raft heading to Quebec City for onward shipment to Britain.
The two men were paid for the number of staves and the time taken to complete the task. If they didn't finish the job there were penalties, unless there were extenuating circumstances.
Earlier, I wrote that Oxford was believed to have gone to Quebec City by one of the rafts. I have seen nothing to change this.
As may be known there is a memorial to Philomen Wright's older brother Thomas in the burial ground in Old Chelsea. Thomas had died about a year and a half after his arrival here. There is no mention of his wife Mary Sprague. Whatever happened to her?
The answer showed up in this collection. She was now Mary Spraig as more than one document indicated, showing her as the widow of Thomas Wright Senior. She married secondly John Love.
Now we come to Lucy (1795-1883) a daughter of Thomas Wright and Mary Sprague/Spraig. Lucy (or May as she was often called) married first to a Swede, John Rusentrom who died Dec. 26, 1822 by drowning. There were some children it was said. We don't know if this is true or what happened to them.
Within three years the widow married again, to Thomas Reid (1805-1874) from Tipperary, Ireland. There were seven children of this union. Lucy outlived both her husbands.
Several of her children and grandchildren are buried in the Protestant Burial Ground in Old Chelsea.