üPARA yPAR@ ` ⌐TEXT ` ¢Wright, Laura Maria Sheldon
1809╨1886
missionary
Born on July 10, 1809, in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, Laura Sheldon grew up there and from the age of seven in nearby Barnet. From an early age she was a playmate of local Native American children, among whom she began holding prayer meetings at ten. After completing her formal education in local schools she became a schoolteacher in Barnet and Newbury. In January 1833 she married the Reverend Asher Wright, a missionary to the Seneca Indians in western New York. Taking up her husband╒s work at the Buffalo Creek reservation, she soon mastered the Seneca language. Over the years she became a respected and then a much loved figure among Indians. Using a Seneca alphabet devised by her husband, she began teaching the children to read and write from a series of schoolbooks she produced, including a primer printed in 1836, a speller in 1842, and a bilingual journal that appeared regularly between 1841 and 1850.
The Wrights labored to help the Senecas make the difficult transition from a hunting culture to a settled agrarian one, a task greatly complicated by the loss of Buffalo Creek reservation to the encroachment of land developers from the growing city of Buffalo.
The extreme hardships, including starvation and epidemic disease, that followed upon the Senecas╒ removal to the Cattaraugus reservation╤the Wrights╒ mission moved there in 1845╤left scores of Seneca children orphans. Laura Wright took many of them into her home and in 1854 prevailed upon Philip E. Thomas, a wealthy Quaker merchant of Baltimore, to establish the Thomas Asylum for Orphan and Destitute Indian Children (later the Thomas Indian School), of which the Wrights served thereafter as co-directors. Laura Wright, known among the Senecas as ╥Auntie Wright,╙ performed countless acts of charity and gentle leadership, always respecting Seneca customs and working when possible through her insights into Seneca psychology. From her husband╒s death in 1875 she lived in the home of Nicholson H. Parker (of the distinguished Seneca family that also produced General Ely S. Parker). She died at the Parker home, near Iroquois, New York, on January 21, 1886.
