The Bishop's Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright

by Crouch, Tom D.

  Certain of his own convictions, he remained outside of the established churches for five years following his conversion. Finally, late in 1846, Milton turned his attention to the Church of the United Brethren in Christ. He had known John Morgan, an itinerant preacher of the sect, for many years, and regarded him as “one of the best and grandest men [I] ever knew.” After studying the “usages and doctrines” of the faith in some detail and attending a major church conference in Andersonville, Indiana, he decided that the Brethren, “respectable, but not cursed with popularity,” suited him. Following a Sabbath sermon at Dan Wright’s home in 1847, the Reverend Joseph A. Ball of the United Brethren White River Conference baptized both Milton and his brother William into the faith by total immersion.25

  At the time of Milton Wright’s entry, the Church of the United Brethren in Christ was just forty-seven years old. The denomination was a product of the wave of evangelical pietism that had swept over the United States late in the eighteenth century. Philip William Otterbein, spiritual father of the church, was a German Reformed minister who had immigrated to Pennsylvania in 1752. Working with Mennonite leader Martin Boehm, Otterbein had staged a series of highly successful revival meetings among German immigrants in the back-country of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia.26

  Otterbein’s highly personal and emotionally charged approach struck directly at the heart of traditional Calvinism. He rejected predestination out of hand, emphasizing the importance of the individual conversion experience, a personal relationship with God, scripture, and the moral life as evidence of sanctification.

  The Church of the United Brethren in Christ was established by a group of admiring and like-minded evangelical preachers meeting at Frederick, Maryland, in 1800. Before Otterbein’s death in 1813 the church remained little more than a loose amalgamation of congregations. Gradually, however, a church structure emerged. The first General Conference was held in 1815. Two years later the group adopted a Confession of Faith and a Book of Discipline. By 1830 the scores of frontier converts flocking into the circuit meetings in Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana had diluted the original ethnic German flavor to the extent that English was adopted as the official language for preaching and church publications.

  In theology and church polity the Brethren had general links to the Methodist, Mennonite, and German and Dutch Reformed traditions. The original pietistic strain remained very strong. Ritual was regarded as of so little importance that individual congregations were free to adopt any form of baptism or communion they chose.

  The rapid growth of the church required the adoption of the first governing Constitution at the General Conference of 1837. The original document proved so weak and unpopular, however, that it was replaced by a much stronger constitution only four years later.

  The Constitution of 1841 reflected both the individualism and the democratic viewpoint common to so many of the frontier converts who now made up the bulk of the membership. It established a single clerical rank—presiding elder—to which fully ordained ministers were admitted. All basic decisions affecting the church were to be decided by vote at a quadrennial General Conference attended by clerical delegates representing the local conferences, or geographic subdivisions of the church. These local conferences met annually to set regional policy, ordain ministers, and conduct other business.

  Five bishops, the sole governing authorities linking the congregations into administrative districts, were elected to a four-year term by the delegates to each General Conference. The notion of life tenure for bishops, as in the Methodist pattern, was anathema to a church dominated by frontier egalitarians.

  The new Constitution also underscored a reform tradition that was already well established in the church. Good Brethren were exhorted to forswear alcohol, and unofficially encouraged to support the antislavery cause. Membership in the Masonic order, or any other secret society, was specifically forbidden. In that regard, they were in good company.

  By the third decade of the nineteenth century, Freemasonry, which had been so popular with American and French revolutionary leaders, was widely regarded as an elitist cabal, its sole purpose to offer members an unfair preference in business, social, and political situations. The notion of a secret privileged brotherhood that cut across the lines of nation and religion struck the wrong chord in a country where it was believed that men and women ought to be able to rise in life solely on the basis of their own merits. Moreover, the Masonic Lodges, with their secret rituals, cabalistic symbols, and ceremonial garments, seemed almost sacrilegious to many evangelical Christians of the sort who founded the United Brethren Church.

  The Brethren were not alone in their opposition to secretism. Anti-Masonic feeling functioned as an important organizing principle in American politics during the decade 1826–36. Thurlow Weed, William Henry Seward, and other rising young politicians used the issue to rally anti-Jacksonian support. Established leaders attached themselves to the movement as well. Ex-President John Quincy Adams, for example, campaigned for the governorship of Massachusetts on the anti-Masonic ticket. After 1835, voters lost interest in the question of secret societies, but the issue remained very much alive among evangelical groups like the Brethren. Within the church, anti-Masonic sentiment was strongest in the West, where the original prohibition against secret societies in the Constitution of 1841 was repeatedly reaffirmed.

  The church stand on such political and moral issues as alcohol, slavery, and secret societies was far more important to Milton Wright than any theological fine point. He represented a new generation: while committed to the essentials of pietism and a personal religion, he rejected much of the emotional fervor that had marked the church during the years of the great revivals. He would do his best to win souls for God, but he reserved his heart and his energy for the fight to lead men and women onto the path of righteousness here on earth.

  Milton had chosen his course in life. Two years after joining the church he was licensed to exhort, or offer comment on scripture during services. He preached his first sermon on November 17, 1850; was admitted to the White River Conference, the local church governing body, in August 1853; and was regularly ordained as a minister three years later.

  Milton would not earn a regular church salary until he was appointed a full circuit preacher. In the meantime, he continued to live at home and work his father’s fields. He began teaching in local schools in 1849 to earn additional money, and would continue to do so off and on for the next decade. In April 1852, the school examiners of Rush County certified him as a “gentleman of good moral character” qualified to teach orthography, English grammar, reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography in the common schools.27

  Milton once remarked that he was “fond of science, fond of youth and children,” and had been “an enthusiastic lover” of the teaching profession “after experience had taught [me] the art of governance by mental and moral forces.”28 He would remember his successes with great pride—the backward children he had helped to catch up with their class, the poor student who went on to medical school, the wayward boys whom he had taught self-discipline.

  He also put his teaching experience to use in raising his own children, each of whom was taught to read through the first McGuffey before they entered school, “except my daughter, whom my second son taught.” Many years later he became incensed at the techniques employed at the Dayton elementary school: “My youngest grandson was turned over to me after a teacher had taught him to guess at words!” he complained. “It was a hard job to break him from guessing.”29

  In 1853 Milton was appointed supervisor of the preparatory department at Hartsville College, a United Brethren institution. The position would also enable him to take a number of college courses, including Greek. But he became ill and could not return the following year. Although he never graduated from college, he took great pride in the honorary degree of doctor of divinity awarded many years later by Western College, another Brethren school.

  Marriage was mu
ch on Milton’s mind during his year at Hartsville. The notion of family was so important to the young clergyman that he determined to exercise great care in selecting a wife, and cautioned his brother William to take a similar approach: “I would by all means advise you to marry just as soon as you find somebody you are sure you want to have for a companion. Don’t wait to get fixed only wait to find the person but be sure about that first.”30

  Milton was not a man to allow his heart to govern his head. Back in Fayette County he had fallen “deeply in love” with the “uncommonly good looking” third daughter of neighbor Thomas Stephens, but had not proposed marriage because “I could never think she was the right one for me.” Perhaps not, but there had been some very deep feeling involved. Three quarters of a century later, in January 1916, Milton still remembered this girl he had “always much admired.” “Still do,” he concluded.31

  Following the time-honored tradition of older brothers gone off to college, Milton filled his early letters home to William with news of his romantic prospects. “I live very well here,” he told his brother, “but alas! I can find my ‘lovely fair one’ nowhere.” He must have met Susan Koerner within a few weeks of sending that letter.

  chapter 2

  MILTON AND SUSAN

  1853~1869

  Susan Catherine Koerner remains in the shadows of the Wright family. Unlike her husband, she did not keep a diary or leave extensive reminiscences behind. Only a few of her letters have survived. She died of tuberculosis on July 4, 1889, long before her sons became famous and reporters flocked to interview all the members of the family. Even Milton, the inveterate genealogist and record keeper, failed to document her background as fully as he did the myriad branches of his own family.

  She was born near Hillsboro, in Loudon County, Virginia, on April 30, 1831, the fifth and last child of John and Catherine Koerner. Her father, John Gottlieb Koerner, was a native of Foerthen, near Schleitz, Saxony, who had emigrated to the United States in 1818 to avoid conscription. He worked as a carriage maker in Baltimore for a time before marrying Catherine Fry, the daughter of John Philip Fry (sometimes given as Fryer), an American-born farmer of Swiss extraction, on April 10, 1820.

  The couple moved in with the bride’s parents on a seventy-acre farm in the lovely, rolling countryside three miles southeast of Hillsboro. Koerner continued to follow his trade, apparently operating a small carriage shop on the farm, as well as a forge in town.

  Philip Fry’s will was recorded in the Loudon County Courthouse on March 27, 1824. The document was finally probated seven years later, in September 1831, a few months after Susan’s birth. This length of time, combined with a suit in chancery filed by John Koerner on his wife’s behalf on December 12, 1831, suggests that there may have been some family difficulties relating to the will. In any case, John and Catherine sold the land to one William Brown on September 12, 1832, and set out for Union County, Indiana, where a number of relatives had already settled.1

  They prospered in the new country. The sale of the Virginia farm had enabled them to buy 170 acres of good Indiana bottom land. When their grandson Orville visited the Koerner farm and workshop fifty years later, it resembled a small village, with twelve to fourteen buildings, including a carriage shop furnished with a foot-driven lathe.

  Koerner was just the sort of man to delight an intelligent grandson. “He did not accept all that he heard or read,” Orville remembered with obvious admiration.

  It was his habit to read newspapers aloud to his family, and when, as invariably happened, he came to something that interested him because of approval, disapproval, or for any other reason, he would interpolate comment without changing his tone or rate of utterance. It was impossible for a listener to tell just how much that he seemed to be reading was actually in the paper and which ideas were his own. One by one, members of the family would study the paper afterwards to see if various surprising statements were really there. No matter how commonplace a newspaper article may have been, it was never colorless when he read it.2

  Koerner and his family had converted from Presbyterianism to the United Brethren faith soon after arriving in Indiana. He remained a prominent member of the church for over fifty years. His daughter Susan experienced conversion and joined the Brethren at the age of fourteen, in 1845.

  Susan was very close to her father, and apparently spent a good deal of time in his carriage shop as a young girl. Her children remembered her as having considerable mechanical aptitude. She designed and built simple household appliances for herself and made toys, including a much-treasured sled, for her children. When the boys wanted mechanical advice or assistance, they came to their mother. Milton was one of those men who had difficulty driving a nail straight.

  Wilbur and Orville had their mother to thank for their lifelong penchant for tinkering, and, ultimately, for their extraordinary ability to visualize the operation of mechanisms that had yet to be constructed. That ability, coupled with their fascination with technological problem solving, would carry them far.

  Susan Wright (c. 1870), was a shy, quiet woman who loved to work with her hands.

  Susan was a scholar as well. “Like myself,” Milton Wright reported with his usual modesty, “in school she excelled.” Her father sent her on to Hartsville College, a rare opportunity for a woman of that time and place. She studied literature and “came within three months of graduation.” But, according to Milton, she “was not ambitious for the degree.”3

  The most striking feature of Susan’s personality was her painful shyness. Milton regarded it as an asset, and spoke with pride of her modesty and quiet demeanor. Her son Orville, who inherited the quality from her, saw the pain engendered by intense shyness. Just after her marriage, he once told his friend Jess Gilbert, Susan went to a strange grocery store. On being asked where the items should be delivered, she became so flustered that she could not recall her own name.4

  We know little of their courtship except that it was a long one. When they met at Hartsville in 1853, Milton was twenty-four and Susan twenty-two. Both wanted to be absolutely certain that the other had the character and strength of purpose required to face the difficulties of a Christian life.

  Following his year at Hartsville, Milton returned to a farm he had purchased in Grant County. He taught at Neff’s Corner for two years, 1854–55, and conducted a revival in Indianapolis in the fall of 1855. Ordained a minister of the faith at Abingdon, Indiana, in August 1856, he was posted to the Andersonville Circuit, near the family home in Fayette County. It was a particularly appropriate assignment—he was replacing a man who had created a minor scandal on the circuit when it was discovered that he was a Mason. Then, in the early spring of 1857, Milton accepted a call to join an Oregon mission.

  “Mother was much affected yesterday about my going to Oregon, but was resigned,” he wrote in his diary on May 28. “She said that she prayed that her sons might be ministers, and she ought not to complain.”5

  On June 19, as he was getting ready to leave, Milton had a “private talk” with Susan. He proposed, and asked her to accompany him to Oregon. Milton did not record her response, but it appears that she said yes to him and no to Oregon. They would be married after his return, if both of them were still willing.6

  Susan was now twenty-six. If all went well, Milton’s mission might last as long as three years. Clearly, this was a woman who wanted to be very sure of her partner in life.

  Milton proved steadfast. The two and a half years from June 1857 to November 1859 were to be a forecast of their marriage. A rising churchman, he would spend most of his life on the road. There were churches to be visited, conferences to be attended, the work of the Lord to be done. The letters that passed between them now were the first of hundreds that would bind their lives over the next thirty years.

  Milton left home in late June with a party of five destined for the United Brethren missionary circuits of Oregon. They traveled by train east through Dayton, Xenia, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Altoona
, Harrisburg, and Philadelphia. From Amboy they journeyed up the North River to New York by steamboat, arriving in the city in time for the Fourth of July celebration. “Little balloons, shooting crackers, cake, pie, orange, [and] pineapple sellers, the firing of cannon and all sorts of parades seem to be the order of the day,” Milton wrote William. “And tonight they expect to have fireworks.”7

  For a young minister fresh from a Hoosier cornfield, New Yorkers seemed daunting. “The military companies were out strutting about this forenoon,” he told William. “Some of them pretty hard folks—hard looking I mean.” Three of Milton’s companions—Mr. Dougherty, his wife, and daughter—were caught up in a “riot of Bowery Boys,” escaping into a doorway just as the rowdies approached them.8

  They sailed aboard the Illinois at 2:00 P.M. on July 6, bound for Panama. Milton, fascinated by the sea, found it difficult to sleep. “I went forward at night, and for hours saw the moonlight dance on the waves.” While most of the passengers suffered from seasickness, he flourished. “My berth was No. 102; my seat at table 63.” The world was full of new sights and sounds—Watling Island, where Columbus had landed; flying fish and porpoise “nearly the length of a man”; the fortifications at Kingston, Jamaica; fruit sellers, beggars, and native divers calling for dimes to be thrown into the clear water; “Sixty colored girls” carrying baskets of coal aboard the ship “with snatches of song and dance.”9

  They journeyed across Panama by rail, passing “villages, huts, trees, swamps, mountains, Panama soldiers, Indians,” and mosquitoes, then boarded the Golden Age, and sailed for San Francisco on July 18. Milton was shocked that “not a few” church members took part in a dance on board. A Spaniard present that evening remarked to the Americans that their nation was but a child. “A very large child,” Milton replied.10