USA > North Carolina > Biographical history of North Carolina from colonial times to the present; > Part 40
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the influence of a long line of godly and scholarly men became more and more assertive, and erelong prevailed. He became a brilliant student and later a beloved minister. "With manners mild and gentle, a voice sweetly and musically toned, with a sound, discriminating mind, well stored with learning, and with a heart overflowing with love to his fellow-men, he was fully equipped for battle. In private life he was, especially among those with whom he was familiar, extremely cheerful in conversation, seek- ing to please as well as to instruct. In the pulpit he was ever solemn, giving apparently his whole soul to the subject before him. No levity of conduct or of speech ever escaped him-he was there solely to instruct and persuade. By many he was con- sidered a fine pulpit orator : he was so, as far as a minister of the Gospel in the pulpit can be so who uses little or no action. Mr. Witherspoon used none or very little. His presence in the pulpit was commanding and solemn, his enunciation clear, his language chaste and pure, and his sweet voice penetrated to the remotest corner of the church. The leading feature, perhaps, of his mind was his knowledge of human character. . . . This power or faculty enabled him to adapt his discourse to his audiences in a most effective manner. Especially was he successful in addressing the young and his colored hearers. His language and his illus- trations then were suited to their comprehension, and with both classes he was a favorite."
He assisted Reverend Doctor William McPheeters with the ser- vices on February 7, 1818, dedicating the first church building of the First Presbyterian Church of Raleigh, and with two others he assisted in the organization of the First Presbyterian Church of Greensboro.
He was the recipient of the honorary degrees of A.M., D.D., and LL.D. The first was conferred by the University of North Carolina in 1815, and by the College of New Jersey. The degree of D.D. was conferred in 1836 by the College of New Jersey and by Lafayette College. His church bestowed many honors upon him. He was elected Moderator of Orange Presbytery in 1822, 1827 and 1831, a very unusual honor, as one year is the usual
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term of service. At the end of the session in 1827 he was made Stated Clerk. In 1836 the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, which met that year in Pittsburg, elected him Moderator, which is the highest honor in the gift of the church, and it has been said that "he was found equal to the task," and that "he made the finest impression on the whole church as to his ability and impartiality." According to custom as retiring Moderator, he preached the opening sermon on the following year. The text of his sermon was I Cor. 1:10, II. At that time the church was convulsed with vital controversies, in which he took an active part, contributing many energetic articles to the Philadelphia Presby- terian. He took the position that the grave political questions which were agitating the nation were not matters upon which the church as a church should legislate.
Shortly after his death Orange Presbytery met at Milton, and during its session resolutions were adopted in reference to Doctor Witherspoon, in which he is alluded to as "gifted with talents of a high order," and as "having enjoyed opportunities of instruction better than most men of his day." This estimate of him appears in the resolutions: "As a popular speaker he was excelled by none, the silvery tones of his voice, the grace and eloquence of his manner, his ready flow of language, combined with a re- markable memory, a fervid imagination and vigorous powers of thought made him a most attractive preacher. For his success, however, he was, perhaps, not less indebted to his quali- ties as a man than as a preacher-gentle, courteous, affable and kind, he was a pastor greatly beloved." Such a tribute is a price- less inheritance to his children.
W. A. Withers.
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R.M. Night
RICHARD HARVEY WRIGHT
V preparing a sketch, a biographical sketch, which should be the history of the life and I character of the person under discussion, it is often a hard matter to present an accurate pen picture because of lack of information. The mere outline, the gathering of data conveying information as to birth, occupation, attainments-those things are easily gotten together, but the inside information, the real story of human interest, the incidents which lead to the climax of each achievement, are often considered by the narrator of no importance ; or if of importance, of such a trivial nature that it were useless to suggest them. Some men will enter into every detail; dwell upon events and happenings which are of no material import, while others, especially busy men, sweep away all "inci- dents of the journey," saying: "I started at the central depot, and after seven days or twelve days reached my destination." And when we find a man of this character, a busy, energetic man, the one who essays to become the historian and write his life's work finds himself often at disadvantage to portray the real character, and that is our position in this case.
In attempting a biographical sketch of Mr. Richard Harvey Wright, we have materials for a large volume. We have at once, in every year of the record of his remarkable and successful career, a moral ever standing bright upon the page; we have the
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truth of the homely adage, that "keeping everlastingly at it will bring success" brought home to us in the early years of his struggles and ambitions ; and we have set before us from the very first mile post that he passed an ideal which was his, and a char- acter formed in the light of that ideal that withstood all tempta- tion, and which proved the strength and foundation of all his undertakings. So in recording the important events in his life we are not without materials; but for the shades and shadows which illumine many pictures of successful men the reader must supply them, for they have not been given to the limner.
Richard Harvey Wright was born near Louisburg, North Carolina, Franklin County, in the year 1851, on the 13th day of July. His father, Mr. Thomas D. Wright, was a country gentle- man, born in North Carolina, his father being an Englishman who settled in the South. As Mr. Wright was early left an orphan, his father dying when he was but six years of age, and his mother, Mrs. Elizabeth G. Wright, passing away when he was but four- teen years of age, Mr. Wright never had opportunity to learn anything of importance about his ancestors. He found himself alone in the world at the age of fourteen, in delicate health, and decided to enter into the mercantile business. He had gone to Horner's School, and there prepared for a collegiate course, but finding himself financially unable to continue his studies, there- fore reluctantly he closed his books for the time being, went to Oxford and became an apprentice in a general merchandise store, agreeing to work three years for his employer. He was to re- ceive his board and washing and $50 per year for the three years. Those years were 1869, 1870 and 1871. And while we see the young man, an orphan boy, toiling through the day selling general merchandise, and knowing that he was to receive practically nothing in money for his services, it turned out that he was better paid than many a young man receiving a hundred dollars a month, While at school the teacher, Professor T. J. Horner, had filled him with ambition, and many were the long nights that young Wright laid on his bed or sat at a table before a dim light and read and reread the lives of great men; followed them in their
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struggles with adversity; wept with them in their defeats and rejoiced with them in the final triumphs. It was here, when he was an apprentice, that the character which has stood him in such splendid stead was formed; it was here, in these midnight hours, that he dreamed a road and way for himself through what seemed an impenetrable forest. The writer of this sketch asked him what else he read, and he told him that many of the poems of Long- fellow had inspired him and made his burdens light. He was not asked what particular poem so strongly appealed to him, but we dare say that "The Rainy Day" and the "Psalm of Life" were some that he many times read, and resolved that he would "be up and doing, with a heart for any fate; still achieving, still pursuing" __ he could labor, he could wait! After three years of apprenticeship were passed, Mr. Wright formed a copartnership with his em- ployer under the firm name of Hunt & Wright. They opened a store at Tally Ho, in Granville County, and ran it until 1874, and one night it burned to the ground, and not a cent of insurance was to be collected, for the insurance policy had expired. After the fire Mr. Wright found himself worse off than nothing by sev- eral thousand dollars ; all that the firm owed he was in duty bound to pay his part, which he did uncomplainingly-and he also figured that his seven years' work and toil were in that ash heap, because he didn't then see how he could engage in general merchandise. But he never lost heart. He, however, was up against a propo- sition. He was away from home when the fire came, and he was naturally feeling blue, downhearted and despondent. It hap- pened that the famous lecturer, Josh Billings, who not only had an original way of spelling, but an original and striking way of presenting a proposition, was to lecture that night in Raleigh. Young Wright thought he would go and hear the lecture, as Josh Billings was then justly famous, and he told the writer that that lecture was worth to him a thousand times what it cost. As stated, he was feeling at odds with the world; he had lost all he had, was several thousand dollars in debt, and he was really blue, with all the term implies. In his quaint way, and among the first things he said on the platform, Billings remarked : "Young man,
rem samy riff blot od pan .osor aff bals
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never grieve over spilt milk, but pick up your milk pail and go for the next cow." Mr. Wright said that any other time per- haps he would not have noticed the import of this philosophy, but it seemed to be directed to him alone; he took it all to him- self-and that was about all he heard or remembered of the lecture. All through the programme he saw another pail ma- terializing ; he saw the cow, and he saw that the thing to do was to get another pail and keep on a-milking. He went to his hotel, and that quaint sentence still rang in his ears; it was there the next day and it refused to leave him. He saw things in a differ- ent light, and it was from what Billings said that he saw he had a heart for any fate, and he at once commenced to look around, and in a short time he was again in business, this time in Durham, with his old partner-and the firm did well.
But after seven years of active merchandising as a proprietor, in 1877 Mr. Wright took with him another partner in another line, and commenced the manufacture of smoking tobacco at Durham, under the firm name of R. H. Wright and Company. After a year in a rented building, in 1878 he built a factory, and remained in it a year alone, having purchased his partner's inter- est. It was while running the factory alone that he went out into the world-went after business-traveled the West, and while older concerns sent traveling men in the same territory, Mr. Wright seemed somehow to be able to secure more orders, to sell more goods, than all of them put together, and naturally enough his business began to attract widespread attention in the trade. He continued a year in his new factory, and was building up a large business. His factory was just in the rear of the factory of W. Duke Sons and Company, and it happened that this firm was attracted to the business being done by Mr. Wright, and especially had Mr. Washington Duke been made familiar with the success of Mr. Wright on the road from the fact that they had traveled together, and Mr. Wright's orders surprised Mr. Duke to the extent that he was offered a chance to purchase W. Duke's interest in that concern. So in ISSo he became one of the partners, and for five years there was, in the parlance of
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RICHARD HARVEY WRIGHT
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to-day, "something doing." Not only in America, but in all the foreign countries of the world, Mr. Wright went with his samples, and his energy, and his tactful ways, and blazed the way for what afterward became one of the greatest commercial successes in the United States. It was in these five years, these strenuous years of travel, that Mr. Wright became a true cosmopolite; became a traveler distinct in his class for miles traversed; familiarized him- self with trade and social conditions of the world and remembered what he saw; was alert to all the stopping places of opportunity, as was evidenced in after years. Whether in Kimberley or Johan- nesburg, Alexandria or Khartoum, Bombay or Singapore, Canton of Tokio, Melbourne or Auckland, Manila or Porto Rico, Calcutta or Algiers, Mr. Wright was "at home" -- there were friendly hands to clasp his and familiar faces to greet him.
After having been four years in this exciting game of travel, Mr. Wright was married in June, 1884, to Miss Mamie Exum, of Wayne County, North Carolina. This estimable lady lived a little less than a year, and again Mr. Wright plunged into the Old World, and returned to sever his relations with the Duke concern and take up another line.
In September, 1885, he moved to Lynchburg, Virginia, and purchased an interest in the Lone Jack cigarette factory, and was managing director until December, 1888, when he retired to take the sole agency of the Bonsack Cigarette Machine, of which he was then and still is a large stockholder, in the countries of China, Japan, the Philippines, India and Africa. Since that time Mr. Wright has spent a great deal of his time in travel. He has circled the globe a dozen times, and thinks no more of going to Europe than the average man does of going to some city a half hundred miles away. In a financial way Mr. Wright has been successful far beyond his wildest dreams. He has made his money because of his ability to grasp the significance of events : because of his industry and his honesty. He has never soiled his hands or mind with any get-rich-quick proposition. He has deliberately laid out his campaigns of commerce as a shrewd general lays out his plans of battle, and if he saw Opportunity sitting in the
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shadows of the Pyramids, he was in Egypt before the ordinary man would be through discussing with himself whether he should 'go or not. Mr. Wright never believed in the mystic thing called "luck." He ever believed that there must be determination and steadfastness-there must be a purpose back of all human en- deavor, and when he gets on a ship and the purser tells him the only stateroom he has is number thirteen, Mr. Wright says thir- teen is as good as any if it is as good-that the name or number has nothing to do with him.
It would be impossible to attempt a recital of the different busi- ness enterprises in which Mr. Wright is interested. He is presi- dent of Wright's Automatic Tobacco Packing Machine Company, and has supplied this machine to a large part of the tobacco manu- facturers of the United States. He also owns Wright's Cigarette Packing Machine; is director in the Wright Coal and Coke Com- pany, Prince, West Virginia; and the Stonewall Coal and Coke Company, of Stonewall, West Virginia ; is interested in the United Machine Company, of London, and is president of the Durham Traction Company, and a large real estate owner in Durham. Mr. Wright has also aided in the perfection of many patents, notably the machine for making crimp laps on cigarettes instead of using paste, and a machine for wrapping and boxing laundry soap.
In all this busy life Mr. Wright has never sought political honors or social distinction, and yet, because of his quiet and unob- trusive ways, he counts his friends by the score. He belongs to but one secret organization-the Masonic fraternity. He is affiliated with the Methodist Episcopal Church, and lives a life in accord with the teachings of that denomination. In his political choice he has always, except when the free silver craze swept the country, voted the straight Democratic ticket, and has always aided, loyally and patriotically, in the upbuilding of the South. In his charities he has ever followed the modest teachings, and seen to it that they vaunted not themselves; and only once in public, to the writer's knowledge, did he allow it to be known that he was giving from his wealth to relieve distress. That was when
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the terrible story of San Francisco's cataclysm had been wired to the world and the mute appeal for alms called communities together to take measures to relieve the distress of the suffering. In a public meeting in Durham, Mr. Wright thought all should give something-and he wrote his check for a neat sum, remark- ing that there was more if needed.
Mr. Wright is yet a young man ; there is much before him, and it must be with a pride indescribable that he looks back to the time when he was an apprentice boy at Oxford, working three years for the scant sum that he received, and compares it with the present, when he feels secure in this world's goods; when he knows that he has been as successful as most any man of his time ; when he realizes that all his successes have come to him clean- handed, and that his record for honesty and probity has never been : assailed. "To make a great success," said Mr. Wright to the writer upon one occasion, "one must select a business for which one has a natural talent and taste, and master it until he loves it above all other pastimes or amusement." This is expressed " more fully in the idea of Carlyle, who said that "without labor " there is no ease."
As said elsewhere in this brief sketch, Mr. Wright does not believe in the thing called "luck," and wants nothing to do with superstition. Discussing those two phantom things, he once said to the writer: "Circumstances may assist a man, but sterling honesty and integrity, truthfulness, sobriety and good morals, courtesy, untiring energy, industry and a determination to do one's full duty, coupled with good judgment and practical common sense, will soon put a young man in the front ranks of life," and surely the achievements of Mr. Wright bear full testimony to this proposition.
Although the shadow on the dial of time has lengthened to the middle point since Josh Billings incidentally suggested to a mixed audience that those who had been unfortunate in having their milk pail upset should get another pail and go to the next cow, and while misfortune and lack of funds in the early years kept him from graduating at a school of letters, in that larger institution
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of learning, the University of the World, he has graduated with splendid honors. In deportment, in scholarship which has made him familiar with men, in travel, in broad-mindedness and capa- bility, he is at the head of a class of successful men ; and perhaps the hard lines of his youthful career-the long hours spent at the dim oil light in his Oxford home after a hard day's labor, his association with the lives of great men-only in the cold type of books-and the solace found in the matchless lines of the im- mortal Longfellow, proved a more valuable tutor than had he entered a college with money to burn and received from lettered professors the mysteries found in the Greek and Latin of the curriculum of a famed and fashionable institution of learning. Richard Harvey Wright has written "success" after his name, and who shall say that that is not more satisfactory than had he had better opportunity in his early life and been given authority to write "LL.D.," which might or might not have indicated a valueless distinction ?
Al Fairbrother.
€ 4865.05
5331
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