JACKSON WRIGHT. – Mr. Wright’s life on this coast embodies bits of a sharp experience with Indians as may be found in the records of any of our pioneers. He was born in Missouri in 1842, and in 1850 came to Oregon with his father Lazorus Wright, who took up a Donation claim on Myrtle creek, and was a captain in the war of 1855-56. He removed to the Grande Ronde valley in 1863, where he lived until his death in 1885.
At the age of twenty-two our subject engaged in business of his own, and in 1868 was married to Miss Marindia J. Richardson of Myrtle Creek. It was in 1861 that he met with the attack from the Indians. In company with Captain Bailey of Eugene, driving a band of eight hundred and sixty-two cattle, bound for Washoe, he met with an attack from the Pitt river Indians, by whom Bailey and Samuel Evans were killed, the former shooting down before his death seven Indians in as many minutes. The rest of the men escaped, leaving the cattle to the savages. Six hundred and forty-seven of them belonged to Wright, for the loss of which he has never been reimbursed by the government.
In 1874 he came to the Grande Ronde valley, engaging in sheep-husbandry, finally investing in real estate, and now owning eight hundred acres of excellent land at the north end of the Cove, Oregon, upon which he has a fine residence. Amid pleasant surroundings, with his nine children and two grandchildren, he possesses the happy life of the Eastern Oregon farmer.