Presco Wright, Treasurer of the City of Springfield, was born in Somerset county, New Jersey in 1820.

His parents, Presco Wright, Senior and Jane McKissack, were also natives of that state.  Presco received his education there as well.  he began mercantile life as a clerk at fourteen years of age; and upon coming to Springfield, in 1849 pursued the same avocation, first as a salesman for Jacob Bunn, then for Lewis and Adams and in 1851 engaged in a general merchandising business as a member of the firm Wright and Brown which continued five ears, at the end of which he sold out and retired.

During two of those five years, he filled the office of City Treasurer.  In the fall of 1856, Presco Wright was elected Circuit Clerk of Sangamon County for four years, running six hundred votes ahead of his ticket in the city and township, and was the only Democratic candidate elected at that time.  Being pronounced War Democrat, he was elected in 1862 to the office of County Treasurer on the Union ticket, by a handsome majority, and served two years.  In 1865, he was appointed Postmaster of the city by Andrew Johnson, and filled the position till 1868; was then appointed Assistant Assessor for the two years following; subsequently, he served two years as Deputy County Clerk, and in the spring of 1879 was elected to an unspecified governmental position.

At the age of twenty four, Mr. Wright married Phebe A . Sutton, in New Jersey.  They have an adopted daughter, Mettie Wright.  Mr. Wright is a member of the Lodge, Chapter, Council and Commandery in the Masonic Order.

Excerpted from Pioneer History of Illinois by John Reynolds Published 1887