#52 Ancestors 2020 Week 7 Favorite Discovery: Great Uncle Gib Wright

I knew about my 3X great-grandfather, William Felix Wright, a lawyer and judge from Atlanta, quite some time ago.  Although he was born in Georgia and lived there his entire life, he happened to die while on a visit to his daughter, Ida Elizabeth Dent, in Maryland in 1887, and thus he turned up fairly early in my family history research.  After his death, his wife Elizabeth Caroline Dent, stayed in Maryland with her daughter and died there in 1914.

However, I never had much luck tracing the Wright line and further back than William.  I suspected that he might be the son of 60-year-old Littleberry Wright, who showed up in the 1860 Census of Newnan GA living next door to William and his family, but I had no evidence for this other than proximity.

Until I found a serendipitous reference to William one day when I was browsing through newspapers.com.  The Atlanta Constitution did a little article in 1898 about "kinsmen on the Georgia bench,"  listing judges who had fathers, sons, or brothers also serving in the judiciary.  It turned out that William had a brother who was also a judge: Gilbert J. Wright.  Who knew?  Certainly not me.  This Gilbert had never shown up in my research.

And fortunately for me, Gilbert was quite well-known in Georgia, far better known than his brother William.  Gilbert Jefferson Wright, or Gib, as he was known, was famous for his exploits as a general in the Confederate Army.  There were numerous articles about Gib and one of them named his parents, Littleberry Wright and Henrietta Austin.  Bingo. My 4X-great-grandparents.  A decades-long brick wall leaped over.

And bonus, Gib was also an interesting character in his own right.

Born in Gwinnett County GA 18 February 1825, about a year after William, Gib grew to a towering height of 6' 4". According to his biography in Men of Mark in Georgia, in his youth, he fell into bad habits and during one of his drinking bouts, was so unfortunate as to kill one of his comrades.  This led to a notable trial and his ultimate acquittal of the charge.  Gib was one of the first to volunteer for the war with Mexico in 1846, where he sustained a wound that gave him a stiff neck and a slightly peculiar stance for the rest of his life.

Returning to Georgia after the war, he studied law, set up practice in Albany GA, and in 1850, married Dorothy Chandler, the daughter of Thomas Henry Chandler and Mary Belle Jackson. They had no children.

At the outbreak of the war between the states, Gib organized the Albany Hussars, part of Cobb's Legion.  He participated in more than 100 engagements during the war and ultimately rose to the rank of Brigadier General. There are many accounts of his eccentricities, such as this story about his actions at Gettysburg:

On entering a small town, a panic-stricken courier rushed up to him saying, "General, the Yankees are coming down this road! "  To which Gib replied: "Tell 'em I'm travelling this road myself and if they don't get out of the way, it will be hell to pay." In a few minutes, he met the Federals, charged them instantly, and despite the fact that he was outnumbered, he routed them and captured a great many Union prisoners. (The Anderson Intelligencer, Anderson Court House SC, 14 February 1900.)

After the war, Wright returned to Georgia and the practice of law, was several times elected mayor of Albany and eventually appointed to the bench in 1875.

As a judge, he continued to forge a unique path, as this story illustrates:

"The redoubtable Col. Gilbert J. Wright, mayor of Albany, and judge of the Circuit Court, 1875-80. "Old Gib," as he was known to the cavalrymen of the Army of Northern Virginia, was a man of undisputed courage, successor of Gen. P. M. B. Young as colonel of Cobb's Legion. Once when he was presiding on the bench, two men, a white man and a Negro, were tried on the same day, for the same offence, by the same jury. The jury found the white man innocent: later that day they declared the Negro guilty. Said Judge Wright: "Stand up, Moses. You have been convicted of being a nigger. I put the lightest fine on you the law permits, one dollar, and I pay it myself." (Atlanta Constitution, 25 April 1962.)

Gilbert Jefferson Wright died in Monroe County GA 3 June 1895 and is buried in the Forsyth City Cemetery.

So, the discovery of my 3X-great-uncle, Gilbert Jefferson Wright, not only led me back another generation in my family history, but also uncovered a genuinely interesting branch of the family tree.