The Extended Wright Family–Uncle Fred, Seafood, Mafia Threats, and Amateur Genetic Research

Great grandmother Laura Sechler and her daughter Ruth did not face the world alone following the death of husband and father George–they had support from their extended family.

Second great grandparents John Nelson Wright and Eliza Marshall Wright had a son and four daughters, all born on Prince Edward Island between 1864 and 1878. A fifth daughter, Lucy, did not survive her first six months. The 1881 Canadian Census shows the family of seven living on the island.

The Wrights came to the United states between 1882 and 1884, John probably arriving first to get established before sending for the family. They settled in Groton, Connecticut. John was a ship’s carpenter, working in the Groton shipyards.

Laura’s Sister Winnie is of particular interest in our story. She married Fred Johnson in Groton in 1890.

Fred was from Groton, but had already lived in Brooklyn at the time of the marriage. He may have known Winnie before setting off for New York and later returned to marry her and bring her to the city. Since Johnson is such a common name, it is difficult to track his early movements.

We have discussed the possible events that first brought George Sechler to Groton. My favorite theory is that George left home to seek work–the train would have taken him from Danville to the Hoboken rail station, just across from Manhattan, where he may have met Fred Johnson, who subsequently led him to Groton.

I have only one odd picture of Fred in his younger days, boxing with another young man. Someone in an intersecting family tree has been active posting pictures on Ancestry, giving us this picture and those that follow. (It has occurred to me that the man on the left could be George, but I have no way of identifying him.)

However George made his way to Groton, he met Laura there and they were married in 1894.

By 1900 all three families were living in Brooklyn. Around that time there were rail lines linking John’s Stuyvesant Heights neighborhood directly to the Brooklyn Navy Yards, leading me to believe he worked there for a time. The 1905 Census, however, lists John (at age 69) as a fish wholesaler, which would be the family business for at least three generations. (Later records still identify John as a carpenter, so he must have done both kinds of work at various times.)

Fred Johnson is related to us only by marriage, but he wins the award for best supporting family member. He appears at several critical times in the family history. He helped sponsor the citizenship of his father in law in 1898.

It was Fred and Winnie Johnson’s house at 618 Macon Street in Brooklyn where brother-in-Law George’s funeral procession began in April 1907. Fred accompanied Laura on the night train to Danville brining George to his final resting place…

Fred’s home is also listed as a waypoint to Danville in George’s burial record of the New York Episcopal Diocese.

As we have noted, Laura and Ruth moved back home with John and Eliza in 1910 following George’s death.

John Nelson Wright died in May 1914 at age 76 in Brooklyn. His obituary leaves a clear record of the whereabouts of his family…

Son Lewis Wright had moved to Shawangunk, New York, not far from Newburgh. Daughters Laura and Winnie, of course, lived in Brooklyn. Daughter May had married Edward Atkinson, and would live near Groton for the rest of her life.

Daughter Ada had married William Hellmund and also lived in Brooklyn. The 1915 New York Census shows that she lived with Ada in the years after John’s death.

Eliza died Dec 12, 1918 in Brooklyn. Today, our mother still wears the ring of Eliza Marshall…

Fred Johnson must have served as a surrogate father for our grandmother Ruth. There is a series of memories our mother has of childhood events in and around Brooklyn while they lived in nearby Freeport, Long Island. Since she was born in 1932 and the family moved away by 1945, the range of these memories must be the late 1930s and early 1940s.

Mom remembers Uncle Fred, and having holiday dinners with his family in Brooklyn. (I discovered Fred Johnson working through archival records from 1890, so it’s gratifying to be able to connect him with living memory on the other end of things.)

Mom remembers that Uncle Fred was a fish merchant at the Fulton Market in Manhattan. For years, the Brooklyn telephone directories include the terse notation “fish” next to his name.

Mom remembers that Uncle Fred sent a barrel of fish to their family when they were living in Auburn, NY after moving there from Freeport, around 1945. (Fred and Winnie had moved to Virginia by this time, but the family remained in the fish business.)

I have one picture of Laura’s sister Winnie, with her daughter Marjorie and her son-in-law Dan Elliot. If Fred Johnson was a surrogate father for Ruth, it seems likely that Marjorie was a surrogate sister. (There is a resemblance between the cousins.)

Fred’s fish business got passed-down to the next generation to his son-in-law Dan Elliot.

This photo of the fish business, from an intersecting family tree in Ancestry, comes with a caption that the business was closed during the depression because of threats from the mafia. This matches a family story that our mother recalls.

Dan Elliot was from Virginia, and after closing the fish business in New York, Dan and Shirley moved to Hampton Virginia, sometime between 1935 and 1940, bringing Fred and Winnie with them. They started a new fish business there.

Fred and Winnie died in Hampton, in 1948 and 1959, respectively.

Dan and Marjorie had daughter Shirley in 1925 in Brooklyn, who was the same generation as our mother. Mom and Shirley stayed in contact with each other through at least 1992. The following letter from Shirley to Mom was apparently a reply to Mom’s inquiry into possible genetic links in the family for cleft lip/palate, spurred by my passing this to daughter Emily, who was born in 1992. If there is such a genetic link between the two branches of the family (which seems unlikely) the common ancestors would be John and Eliza Wright from PEI.

Laura and Ruth stayed in contact with other members of the Wright family through the years. Mom remembers that Laura and Ruth had a serious crash on the Merritt Parkway when returning from a visit in Connecticut, presumably to May’s family. (The Merritt Parkway was built around 1934.)

When Laura died in Michigan in 1945, our grandmother Ruth had a plan for her burial. Husband George Sechler had, of course, been buried in his family plot in Danville in 1907. Laura was sent back to her sister May in Connecticut to be buried in the family plot. Her gravestone acknowledges her as the wife of George Sechler. May herself died four years later.