John J. Latting, "The Wright Family, of Oyster Bay, L. I.," New York Genealogical and Biographical Record 3 (1872): 35-45

Read in the archive.org full text (October 2026; research/mcmillan/Frost_Underhill_Bowne_Feake.md). Read before the Society on 14 Oct 1871. A compiled account of the brothers Peter, Anthony and Nicholas Wright, with transcripts of their wills and of Quaker papers.

• Origin (p. 35): the brothers “emigrated from England to Massachusetts as early as 1636-7. It is believed, although not positively proved, that they were of the very ancient family of Wright in Norfolk.” The Norfolk pedigree that follows (Nicholas Wright and “his wife, Anne Beaupre,” of the sixteenth century) is Latting’s speculation; it is the source of the Frost Genealogy’s “Ann (Beaupre).”
• Lynn, Sandwich and Oyster Bay (p. 35): “They are found first residing at Lynn, then called Saugus … but shortly afterwards removed to Sandwich, Cape Cod … Here several of the children of Peter and Nicholas were born. In 1653 they joined the company led by the Rev. William Leverich, and came to Long Island.” “They were all, at an early period, active and zealous members of the Society of Friends.”
• Anthony Wright’s gift (pp. 35-36) of part of his home lot to “the people in this place called Quakers” for a burial place and meeting house, “this fifteenth the eighte moanth. Anno one thousand six hundred seaventie-two,” witnessed by John Tilton Sen., John Bowne Sen. and Samuel Deane. The meeting house was built under a contract with Samuel Andrews and John Feakes.
• Anthony Wright’s will (pp. 36-37), “this 20th day of the third mouth. Anno 1673,” leaving his estate to his sister Ales Crabbe, with small bequests: to his brother Nicholas’s “wife, Ann Wright … five shillings,” to Caleb, John and Edward Wright, “To Rebecca ffrost, two shillings, six pence; to Sarah Lattin … to Mary Cole,” and at the end “Alsoe, I give unto Isaack Dotye one cow.” Witnesses “Matthew Priar, John Tilton, Sen’’, Samuel Spicer, John Fekes.” Anthony died at Oyster Bay on 8 Sept 1680.
• Hannah Wright (pp. 39-40), Peter’s daughter, who at fourteen went to Boston in 1662 and warned the magistrates “to spill no more innocent blood” (quoting Sewel); and Matthew Prior’s damaged testimony of her drowning in Maryland, “Mariland ye 4th of ye first month 1675”: “ye boat overset & wee were seaven persons in ye boat, three was taken away in ye Judgment … She was wholly given up for the servis of truth … & hath laid down her head in her heavenly father’s bosom in peace.”
• Nicholas Wright (pp. 43-44): “He died in Oyster Bay, in the year 1682, and left the following will”: “Oysterbay, the 10th of April, 1674. I, Nicholas Wright, aged sixty-five years or thereabouts … I make my Loving wife, Ann Wright, sole Executor of my movables,” with the home lot and orchard to his son Caleb and lands divided among “my three sonns, Caleb, John, and Edmund.” Witnesses Tho. Townsend and Gideon Wright. “Proved at a court of sessions held at Jamaica … the 13th, 14th, & 15th days of December, 1683. Letters granted to Ann Wright, the widow, Jany. 15, 1682. [Lib. 2 of Wills (N. Y.), pp. 133, 134, 135.]” (The two years cannot both be right; Paltsits, citing the New York Historical Society’s abstracts, has the will proved 13 Dec 1682.)
• Nicholas’s children (p. 44): “Caleb …; John, who married Mary, daughter of the 1st Henry Townsend; Sarah, who married Josias Latting; Edmund, who married his own cousin Sarah, the daughter of Peter; Martha, who married Nathaniel Coles; Mercy, who married Robert Coles; and Rebecca, who married Eleazer Leverich … from whom … the Court of Assize, in 1670, granted a divorce.” “This, it is believed, was the first case of divorce by this court.” “She subsequently married William Frost, and was by him the mother of two children, sons” (p. 45).