Philemon Wright (September 3, 1760 – June 3, 1839) was a farmer, lumberman and entrepreneur who founded the Ottawa River timber trade in 1806. He was also founder of what he named Columbia Falls Village, mostly known as Wright's Town (or Wrightstown) and Wright's Village to others, the first permanent settlement in the National Capital Region of Canada. Wright's Town, later became incorporated in 1875 and renamed Hull, Quebec, and then in 2002, as a result of a municipal amalgamation, it acquired its present name of the City of Gatineau.
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Biography
Wright was born in Woburn, Massachusetts, into the family of Thomas Wright and Elizabeth Chandler, a large and prosperous Woburn family that had been among the town's founders, 120 years before. Philemon Wright was raised as a farmer.
At the young age of 16, in December 1775 he enlisted as a private in Capt. Wood’s Company of the 26th Continental Regiment. He fought in several battles including the Siege of Boston From March to June 1776, he was serving in the regiment in New York. On May 10, 1777, he was appointed a Corporal in Capt. Jesse Wyman’s Company, Colonel Josiah Whitney’s Regiment, serving at Point Judith, Rhode Island until July 10, 1777. He was promoted to Sergeant on May 26, 1777. On August 18, 1777, he was appointed 3rd Sergeant in Capt. Abraham Foster’s Company of Bullard’s Regiment of Militia. He served until November 30, 1777, fighting in the Saratoga Campaign.
Nicknamed "the Old Squire" by his employees and friends, Wright was once described by John Mactaggart as "about six feet high, a tight man, with a wonderfully strange, quick reflective wild eye”.
On May 16, 1782, Philemon Wright married Abigail Wyman, a Woburn woman whose ancestors were among the founding families of Charlestown, Massachusetts, in 1628. Charlestown would later become Boston. Philemon and Abigail would have a large family of 8 children. Their children (ages listed as of 1800, when they arrived in Hull Township) were: Philemon Jr., 18; Tiberius, 13; Abigail (Nabby, who died at 7 yrs.); Mary (Polly) 10; Ruggles, 8; Abigail, 6; Christopher Columbus, 2; Christiana, b. 1803.
Settlement of Wright's Town
Feeling the strain of overpopulation in Massachusetts, Wright first came to see the isolated and unsettled area of the Ottawa Valley in 1796, returned again in 1798, and once more in 1799. He finally decided that the best location for a new settlement would be next to the Chaudière Falls, near the intersection of the Tenàgàtino-sibi or Gatineau and Kitchi-sibi or Ottawa rivers, where he found thousands of acres of good soil and vast amounts of timber. He applied for the lands of the Township of Hull under the "leader and associates" regime and after swearing allegiance to the Crown, received the grant.
Wright used his natural leadership abilities to convince a group of Massachusetts settlers to come north with him. He sold his holdings in Woburn and led a group of 4 other families and 33 labouring men to the area, leaving on February 2, 1800, at the age of 39. With the help of a native Algonquin scout, who volunteered to help the group negotiate the treacherous voyage over ice from Kinodjiwan or Long-Sault at Carillon to the Akikodjiwan or Chaudière Falls, the group arrived on the western shore of the Gatineau River where it meets the Ottawa on March 7, 1800, and began to clear land. At first, their objective was to clear what was needed for homes and farmland for their survival. Two farms, the "Gateno Farm" (1800), as he named it, and the "Columbia Falls Farm" (1801) were the first to be cleared. Then, in 1801, at the foot of the Chaudière Falls, construction began on other enterprises. Wright preferred to call the falls the Columbia Falls, but the name never stuck. The name Columbia, however, was repeatedly used throughout the new settlement: Columbia Pond (now, Leamy Lake), the Columbia farm, the Columbia hotel, and Columbia road (now, St. Joseph blvd.).
Wright's settlement quickly became Wright's Town with the shops, mills and other enterprises that were built so that the small community would not be dependent on the expensive practice of importing goods from Montreal. Wright built a lumber mill, a hemp and grist mill and a smithy to fulfill their needs. When a fire burned down the smithy, he rebuilt it in stone, adding a trip hammer mill, four forges and four bellows operated hydraulically. He built a large bakehouse, shops for a shoemaker, a tailor, a bark grinding mill, as well as a tannery for curing leather. Always the opportunist, he also saw to it that a brewery and distillery were operating to slake the thirsts of the many employees he employed. Before long, he and his wife Abigail also saw to it that there was a teacher to teach all of the children in the community.
Political career
Wright was elected to the legislature of Lower Canada to represent Ottawa County in 1830 and he and his settlement both saw great success. He voted against the Ninety-Two Resolutions. He was also the leader of Freemasonry in the area for many of the villagers and surrounding communities.
Wright farms
Although he and his family spent their lives as lumber barons, Philemon Wright was always a farmer at heart. He was a strong advocate for "scientific farming" and selective breeding, and he was the first person to import prize Devon and Herefordshire cattle to the Ottawa Valley. In 1813, Wright sold 3,000 bushels of wheat in Quebec for $3.00 a bushel (this astronomically high price courtesy of the War of 1812). By 1823, the Wright family had created several large and lucrative farms, some of which covered most of the land occupied by present-day Hull & Aylmer. These included the Gatteno Farm near Leamy Lake, the Columbia Falls Farm (at Wright's village), The Columbia Farm (Chelsea Rd.), The Dalhousie Farm (by Leamy Lake), the Britannia Farm (on the Britannia Turnpyke), the Chaudière Farm (where Aylmer began), the second Gatteno Farm (east side of the Gatineau) and the Onslow farm (Township of Onslow). In fact, Wright's agricultural community, at the time of his death in 1839, was the most developed of Lower Canada. From Onslow Township (present-day Wyman) to present-day Buckingham, Philemon Wright owned 36,978.5 acres (over 150 km2) The fame of Hull as an agricultural community in Canada, the US and Britain was well deserved.
The Gatteno Farm was the site of the original clearing by the Wright expedition in 1800, where stood Philemon Wright's first cabin he affectionately called "The Wigwam". His second home, a bigger home with a stone foundation, was built just north of the Wigwam. In 1801, at the Chaudière Falls, Wright & his sons created the Columbia Falls Farm and that is the location where Wright's Town grew up. In 1810, Philemon Sr. moved to his third home, built on the Columbia Falls Farm, on its 800 acres. He lived in that home until 1818, when he handed it over to his son Ruggles, along with the reins of all of the family's Chaudière operations. Eventually this property was purchased by E.B.Eddy and he tore down the Wright home and built a mansion named "Standish Hall". That 1st mansion burnt down in 1900 and he built another that ultimately became the very popular Hotel in Hull by the same name, where Louis Armstrong and many big bands came to play. Philemon's 4th home was built just west of the Standish Hall near the Chaudière Falls and was a grand home he named "The White House". The White House closely resembled the Wright Farm home in Winchester Massachusetts where Wright grew up. Almost a perfect copy of Wright's White House can be found at the Billings estate in Ottawa and given that Braddish Billings started his career in the employ of Wright, it may be no surprise that Billing's "grand, genteel" home, as he called it, would have been modeled after The Squire's, as Philemon was often referred to by his friends.
Retirement & death
At the end of his life, Philemon Sr. retired to another farm, this time in Onslow Township, Lower Canada (now the province of Quebec). Wright owned 12,000 acres that spanned the entire width of the County in the first six ranges of Onslow Township. In Wright's papers, in the National Archives of Canada, he frequently refers to his properties in Onslow, both his timber cutting operations and his farming activities there, listing acreages of oats and potatoes and his numbers of cattle. Unfortunately he did not state who was living on the properties or looking after his interests in the township. Joseph Bouchette's map, dated 1831, shows a few buildings and a road in the easternmost lots on the river, which is most likely to be the location of Philemon's Onslow Farm. Philemon Wright's brother-in-law, Joseph Wyman, and his son Joseph Jr., who also came from Woburn, obtained several hundred acres in the west end of the township through Wright. They named the new settlement Woburn after their New England home, and brought in other settlers. Woburn was later renamed Billerica (after Billerica, Mass.) and the name was eventually changed to Wyman.
Wright died on June 3, 1839, in Wright's Town, and is buried in St. James Anglican Cemetery, Gatineau (Hull Sector). He was survived by a large family, including his son Ruggles Wright who invented the timber slide.
Philemon Wright is regarded as the founder of both the cities of Ottawa and of Gatineau. Philemon Wright High School in Gatineau is named after him.
Genealogical relationships
Interesting research through the years has established that through his own family and that of his wife, Abigail, Philemon Wright's family members are related to every President of the United States with the exception of Martin Van Buren and Donald Trump, and also related to the English Royal family