 | Born: 1835 Died: 1909 Jane Wright and her twin sister, Eliza, born in Memphis in 1835, sixteen years after the town was laid out, were two of the very early pioneer citizens of color. Their father was Benjamin Wright, member of a prominent Philadelphia Quaker abolitionist family, who moved from Pennsylvania to Memphis. He owned a large plantation and general store near Memphis and a wharf boat on the Mississippi River. Wright took his infant twin daughters and their mother, Ann, his Afro-Indian housekeeper, to Cairo, Illinois for manumission so that if an thing happened to him, they would not be held in bondage. |
Some of Ann's ancestors were Chickasaw Indians who inhabited the area that is now Memphis prior to its discovery by explorers.
When his daughters grew up, Wright built a large, double two story house and gave one side to Jane and the other to Eliza. The house was located on Front Street in Memphis on the site later occupied by the Shelby County jail. The father employed white teachers from the North to instruct his daughters when they were of school age, and Jane, with whom he made his home, was his confidant and secretary. Although their father made his daughters beneficiaries in his will, in spite of his precautions and wishes, the twins were deprived of his estate, and their freedom was imperiled after he died because all of his possessions, including the twins, were levied upon on the pretext of payment for unfounded debts he was supposed to have incurred. Their lawyer presented the twins' manumission papers to authorities which prevented them from being held in bondage.
Jane became the mother of three children: Anna born in 1856, Benjamin and James. Their father was Colonel James Coleman, a native of Lexington, Kentucky, who was related to General John C. Breckenridge in whose division he served during the Civil War. After the war Colonel Coleman settled in Memphis for several years and was manager of the telegraph office, where the famous inventor, Thomas A. Edison, was employed when he lived in the city. Jane was a strong woman and reared her children with care. She supported her family from rental property supplemented by income received from occasional sewing as she was an expert seamstress. When they were small, she taught her children at home, and later sent her sons to public schools and her daughter, Anna, to LeMoyne Normal Institute where she was one of the two members of the school's first graduating class in 1876. Jane insisted that Anna take piano lessons, and her instructors were German professors who monopolized the profession in Memphis at that time. Anna became an accomplished musician and was far advanced in music when she enrolled for additional study at the Musical Institute of Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio, where her professor, J. D. Riquels, pronounced her one of his best students. Returning to Memphis, Anna taught school, then became principal of Auction Street School prior to her marriage to Robert R. Church, Sr., in 1885. Anna's brothers were employees of the U.S. Postal Service.
Jane Wright was a well known and respected citizen who had many friends. She was interested in civic affairs, and her parlor was a gathering place where political issues of the day were discussed. When Frederick Douglass, the famous abolitionist, visited Memphis, he was a guest in her home.
Among her friends were Joseph Clouston, a wealthy landowner and businessman, and' his wife; Phillip Nicholson, an affluent planter who owned a large tract of1and on South Parkway East and his wife; Joe Pang, a prosperous Chinese merchant and his wife, both of whom returned to China after retirement; Martha Ferguson, pioneer businesswoman, who owned a hand laundry and employed several women; Cash Mosby, who operated railroad excursions to Memphis from various Southern cities, and his wife.
Jane's sister, Eliza, married Thomas Williamson, Sr., a well to do businessman, who owned barber shops in the Gaston Hotel and later the Gayoso Hotel. She was a loyal member of Emmanuel Episcopal Church, as were her children and twin sister whose husband, Thomas Williamson, Sr., was appointed by Bishop Quintard to be one of the church's organizers.
When Jane Wright died in 1909, she had watched a frontier town grow into a city, She had lived through major crises-the Battle of Memphis in 1862, the riots of 1866 and the yellow fever epidemics of 1878-79. She had seen Memphis recover from these disasters and begin a period of growth which would continue throughout the twentieth century.