Robert M. Wright, a prominent resident of Dodge City, has prospered as a farmer, stockman, merchant and public servant. He is a native of the South, born in Bladensburg, Prince George County, Maryland, September 2, 1840. His father, who was born at Alexandria, Virginia, in 1800, often recounted his experlence as a boy on the battlefield of Bladensburg administering to wounded American soldiers. Mr. Wright’s great grandfather was a Prdsbyterian minister in Revolutionary times and raised a regiment of plowboys at Elizabethtown, New Jersey, of which he had command at the battle of the Meadows. The British had a price on his head and destroyed his property and the Tories finally killed him. His wife was shot by Hessian soldiers as she sat at a window with her baby. Elias B. Caldwell, the maternal grandfather, was clerk of the United States Supreme Court at Washington for many years, and when the capitol was destroyed by the British in the War of 1812 his library, which he had loaned to Congress, was also burned.
Mr. Wright came West when sixteen years of age, and until 1859 lived on a farm near St. Louis. In 1850 he took an overland trip to Denver, and during the following eight years, as a trader and a contractor for hauling grain and cutting hay and wood, he crossed the plains four times by wagon and twice by coach. In 1867 he became a post trader at Fort Dodge, and has since resided at that locality. During that period he has served as postmaster, has represented Dodge County in the Legislature for four terms. and has been commissioner of forestry twiee, in 1899-1903.