Page:Men of Mark in America vol 2.djvu/507

 CARROLL DAVIDSON WRIGHT RIGHT, CARROLL DAVIDSON, school teacher at eighteen, private in the New Hampshire volunteers in the Civil war at twenty- two; colonel of a regiment at twenty-four; lawyer in Boston at twenty-seven; senator in the Massachusetts legislature at thirty-two; chief of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor at thirty- three ; director of the Census of Massachusetts at thirty-five; presidential elector at thirty-six; United States Commissioner of Labor at forty-five and president of Clark college at sixty-two, was born at Dunbarton, Merrimack county, New Hampshire, July 25, 1840. His father, the Reverend Nathan Reed Wright a clergyman of the Universalist denomination, married Eliza, daughter of Jonathan Clark of Washington, New Hampshire, whose father, Jonathan Clark, was a revolutionary soldier. Nathan R. Wright preached in Dunbarton and removed to Hooksett and thence to Washington, about 1843, and to Reading, Massachusetts, in 1856. He was "an excellent Bible scholar, a good speaker and a brother to his children." On the paternal side his grandfather was Doctor Nathan Wright of Washington, New Hampshire, son of Jacob Wright, colonel in the New Hampshire militia and a soldier in the Massachusetts troops in the Revolutionary war. His first ancestor in America John Wright, came to Charlestown, Massachusetts Bay colony, about 1644. His ancestry on his father's side were of English origin and on his mother's Scotch.

Carroll Wright worked on a farm until fifteen years of age, his father being a farmer as well as a preacher. He was not robust as a lad and his father's slender means did not allow his rapid preparation for college. He attended the district school and the academy at Washington, the academy at Chester, Vermont, and that at Swanzey, New Hampshire. After his father removed to Reading, Massachusetts in 1856, he attended the high school in that place, and at that time might have entered college two years in advance, but his father could not meet the expense. He therefore took up teaching in 1858, first at Langdon, New Hampshire, then at North Chester,