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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 |
