THE COURT CASE BEHIND THE WRIGHT HOUSE STORY

THE WRIGHT HOUSE, circa 1946, that I was raised in.

With periodic exhaustive study, determination (stubbornness) and in the end, rationalization of recent months (time-out to fight cancer), I have been able to finally satisfy my curiosity over the origin of the Wright House, 133 Sydenham Street, situated on property included in the former (1850) Fairport Survey in the Town of Dresden, Ontario. But it's a long and involved story.

For the purpose of subsequent reading, it should be further explained that William Wright was founder of the Fairport Village settlement that in 1871 was eventually incorporated into the village/town of Dresden along with Josiah Henson's adjacent Dawn Settlement and several other land claims north of the Sydenham River that bisects the community.

 Wright COURT Case, 1890-’91 

It would appear that after the death of WILLIAM WRIGHT (no relation to my Wrights) in 1861, court action was taken against his estate with the ordering of a Sheriff’s Sale on all of his property in the former settlement of Fairport.

A Sherriff’s Sale is a public auction where mortgage lenders, banks, tax collectors and other litigants can collect money lost on property. The action occurs at the end of the foreclosure process when the initial property owner can no longer make good on mortgage payments. Once the lending institution or taxing authority receives a judgment, the court will issue a directive for the sheriff's office to auction the property. 

It would also seem that one of William Wright’s sons, Joshua Wright, was not only unsatisfied with the settlement of his father's estate but also had issues with the subsequent court action involving all Wright property in the Fairport survey (I choose not to repeat rumor, but one can speculate on a lot of what transpired leading up to all of this) and was Plaintiff in a rather unusual countersuit. Joshua was one of three sons and three daughters born to William and his first wife Mary Noble. He married twice, first to Isabelle Trerice and then to Harriet Jane Pretty.

It is unknown why the case was labeled WRIGHT vs. SCRATCH in court documentation other than the fact that Sarah Ann Day Scratch was the last recorded wife of William WRIGHT and they had two children together, a daughter Mary and a son Bruce who died at an early age. Sarah Ann was also the named "executrix" in William's last will and testament. Census records for 1871 show the widow Sarah Ann having re-married John A. Scratch. Living in the Scratch household at the time were two teenage girls, Amanda Fox (17) and Mary Wright (13). Amanda was the daughter of Sarah Anne's first husband, John Fox.

What follows is a transcription of a sitting of the High Court of Justice, Chancery Division, in Dresden, October 4, 1890.

(It is interesting to note prominent Dresden individuals named defendants in the court document, including virtually all of  William Wright's known offsprings and their spouses. It is also of interest that Sarah Ann Day Scratch, the town's first mayor Alexander Trerice, his son Byron and at least five other defendants, were deceased by the time the court case concluded.)

My grandfather Wesley Wright and his second wife Annie Fury Wright, formerly married to a late son of the aforementioned William), were included in the list of defendants.

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE, CHANCERY DIVISION 

BETWEEN 

JOSHUA WRIGHT, PLAINTIFF 

AND 

SARAH WRIGHT 

 Microfilm images of court document

Sarah Ann Day Scratch 

Thomas Wesley Wright 

Sarah Wright 
Sarah Carter 

John Carter                                       

Amasa McKinney Wright 
Margaret Wright 
William Wright  

Isabella Wright 

Alexander Trerice 

Byron Trerice 
Emma Trerice 

Mary Parry 

Hiram Parry 

Eve Ann Wright 

Charles Wright 

Mary Hocking 

W. H. Hocking 
Annie Wright 

Wesley Wright                                       

Martha Lucinda Sturgis 
Stephen Parnell Sturgis 
Richard Winter 
Mary Church 

John Church 

Theodore Seals, 

John Hoskin, Administrator-ad-luteus of Charles Winter deceased 

Rhoda Jane Lambert 

James Lambert 

Louise W. Wees 

John C. Wees                                       

Sarah Ann Day Scratch, Executrix 
Alexander Trerice and Cyrenius Park Watson, Executors 
The Huron & Erie Railway 
The Municipal Corporation of the Town of Dresden 
Esa Searls 
Frederick Searls 
Mabel S. Searls 

...and George Wright infants under the age of 21 years. 

In a certification of my grandfather Wesley Wright's action in this case, registered and signed on the 24th day of January 1891, No. 4333, the judge wrote (all one paragraph): 
 
“Regarding the application of Wesley Wright of the Town of Dresden in the County of Kent, I hereby certify that our order was made on this action by the Master in Chambers dated the fourth day of October AD 1890 whereby stating that the said Wesley Wright is the purchaser of the lands and premises herewith described and that he paid into court the credit of his action the amount in full of his purchase money mentioned in the report of the Master of this Court at Chatham dated 29 Apil 1890. It was ordered that all and singular of those certain parcels or tracts of land and premises known and described as follow, that is to say; Firstly:- All that part of the west half of lot Number Two (2) in the Fifth Concession of the Gore of Camden in the County of Kent lying west of the land sold to on John H. Craig in said report mentioned and east of 40 acres of land now the property of the Defendant Amasa McKinney Wright excepting thereout the portions thereof sold to the Erie & Huron Railway containing 22 ½ acres more or less. Together with a right of way over and upon a strip of land of the uniform width of 40 feet on the west half of Lot No. Three (3) in the said concession and extending along the southerly boundary thereof to a point 50 feet east of the easterly boundary of said Amasa Wright’s 40 acres and Secondly:- Lots Numbers twenty-six (26) and twenty-seven (27) on the south side of Sydenham Street and Lots numbers twenty-six (26) and twenty-seven (27) in the rear of such lots on Plan 131 in the Town of Dresden aforesaid four lots containing four-fifths of an acre more or less, be and the same were thereby vested in the same Wesley Wright his heirs and assigns in fee simple for all the estate right title and interest of the above-named Plaintiff and Defendants therein and thereto and this certificate is given for the purpose of registration of paid Wesley Wright dated this 24th day of January 1891." 

Signature (unreadable) 

Land registration record.

                                                                                                                                                                             CONCLUSIONS:

Annie Wright, 1849-1894

Grandfather Wesley Wright, a widower, was a member of a United Empire Loyalists family that settled in Colchester South, Essex County in the late 1700s. He came to Dresden primarily to marry Annie Wright, a recent widow. It has been difficult to trace, but I have determined that Wesley’s new wife Annie was the widow of David Wright, another son of the aforementioned William Wright, who died of TB at 26 years of age, Nov. 20, 1877. Annie was the daughter of Nelson and Elizabeth Fury (Furey) of Dresden. 

David Wright would have inherited Sydenham Street property as one of the beneficiaries of his father's will. What has not been established is who built the house on said property and when, but it can be assumed that David and Annie were living there when he died in 1877.

Wesley Wright sitting on the
front porch of his Dresden 
home, circa 1890.

Wesley and Annie subsequently married on Feb. 17, 1879, and the couple would have continued to live in the Sydenham Street house from that time on. With the estate foreclosure and Sheriff’s Sale pending some 10 years later, Wesley astutely met requirements of the court, thus obtaining full and legal rights to the property on behalf of himself and Annie. 

Kent County Sheriff John Mercer was the Grantor of the property and local investor M. Mooney the named Grantee as noted in Land Registry Records for the Village of Fairport dated June 30, 1868.  

*A grantee is a legal term used in real estate transactions that describes the person purchasing a property. You can also be a grantee without receiving a property deed. For example, a land contract features both a grantor and a grantee. The grantor is the owner, and the grantee is the buyer who is acquiring an equitable interest but not bare legal interest in a property, obviously the situation in this long, drawn-out case.

By my calculations, the house at 133 Sydenham Street in Dresden is at least 150 years old, having been built perhaps sometime between 1860 and '70 or thereabout by either William or David Wright (we'll never know for sure). A photo of the house taken around 1910 shows it looking very shabby and in need of sprucing up, indicative of a house that would have been a good 50 years old at the time. It had to have been one of the first houses built on Sydenham Street, if not the first.

THE WRIGHT HOUSE shown in photos taken in 1900 and 1912. My dad's foot prints were imbedded in the newly-poured sidewalk (above) when he was about eight years old.

I honestly think that my parents, Grace and Ken Wright, were not privy to much of the above information. Perhaps, too, some of the history was simply unacknowledged. God rest their souls!

Shown here is the Wright House of my youth, after exterior changes, circa 1945. The driveway to the right was part of a neighboring property owned by Dresden dentist, Dr. Harold French. It had been severed from the bottom half of Lot 26 by Wesley Wright in 1905. The lots backed onto Kinsman's Park, formerly a farmer's cornfield. 

My grandparents Louise & Wesley Wright, 1896.

Just to wrap up what on the surface may be a difficult-to-follow account, Wesley and Annie Wright had two sons, Owen and Ebbie. Annie passed away in 1894 and Wes remarried for a third time to spinster Louise Reddick of Sombra in 1896, resulting in the birth of my father Kenneth A. Wright in 1899. Grandfather Wes passed away in 1920, followed by Louise in 1933.

Ken married a Dresden merchant's daughter Grace Perry and as if by fate, I came along a few years later in 1938...Funny how that happened!

Just as an aside, in a period of approximately 125 years, the Sydenham Street house was occupied exclusively by Wright family members, and all of them (with the exception of me and two step-uncles) also died there. All were buried buried in a family plot at the Dresden Cemetery.

It was with mixed emotions that when my mother Grace passed away in 1994, I sold the old house on Sydenham Street and with it went a good chunk of my material heritage. I try not to dwell too much on that realization.

Such is life!

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