Contents
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Showing both families — every line on the page. Pick a side to hide the other
family's ancestors; Earl, Kristin and their three children stay on either way.
Person · Thomas Wright
The record
- HHomethe fan · what changed · open questions
- MMigrationbirths and deaths on a map, by decade
- TTimeline659 entries · 5 eras
- PPeople351 cards, by generationThomas Wright
- LLines13 surname pages
The evidence
- DDocuments1043 thumbnails, filterable
- SSourcesS1–S1235, with where each is cited
The findings
- How the wall came downProeger line
- The glass patentsProeger line
- How the Caffey half was closedCaffey line
- What the DNA saysits own page
- Four routesMigration
- The asymmetryLines
- Open questions20 questions
- Add to this recorda form, read by Earl
How to read this record
Every claim is tagged
Most family trees flatten everything into the same confident typeface. This one does not.
The three research tags below are the whole point of the exercise: they say what a document
proves, what the weight of evidence suggests, and what nobody has found yet. A fourth marks
what the family stated directly, where no document has been retrieved at all — it is kept
separate on purpose and is never quietly promoted to confirmed. A fifth, added on
13 September 2026, marks biological evidence: a DNA result is not a document, and it is not
testimony either. Two further labels mark where this page withholds information
rather than lacking it.
ConfirmedAttested by a document that was actually retrieved and read — a census sheet, a
government index, a grave marker, a family-written obituary.
ProbableStrongly supported but not nailed down: a user-contributed tree, a masked index field,
or a chain of consistent circumstances. Believable, not proven.
Not foundSearched for and not located. This is a statement about the search, not about the
person — the record may well exist somewhere unsearched.
Family testimonySupplied by the family and recorded on their word — no document has been retrieved for
it. Note the diamond rather than the dot: this is provenance, not proof, and it stands
apart from the three record tags above S24.
DNA evidenceBiological evidence consistent with a claim. It corroborates origins; it does
not by itself establish a person or a link. Note the bar rather than a dot or a diamond:
no DNA result on this page is ever counted as confirmed, because no document
was read for it S46.
Living — withheldThe person is living. By the privacy rule for this page, name and relationship are
shown, and at most a year the family has already published. Full dates of birth, ages,
places of residence and record identifiers are held back.
Research in progressA branch that is actively being worked on. The node exists in the structure so the
shape of the family is honest; the detail is simply not in yet.
- Married
- Martha Ann Tate
- Sources
- 1
Research status
Research status: PROBABLE as the father of
James W. Wright. The
History of Dallas County (1892) names Thomas and Martha A. (Tate) Wright as James's parents, but it is a paid-for family account, not a vital record
S85. Added 4 October 2026
Evidence: The 12 December 1815 Davidson County, Tennessee marriage of Thomas Wright and Martha Tate, and the 1850 Davidson County census household of Thomas (b. 1794 NC) and Martha (b. 1797 TN), fit James W. Wright's own stated birth (1825, Tennessee) and the family's documented move to Dallas County, Texas, where a History of Dallas County (1892) names Thomas and Martha A. (Tate) Wright as his parents. Weak or missing: No record yet names James as Thomas's son directly; the link rests on the 1892 county history and the fit of dates and places. Not yet confirmed. Know more? Confirm or correct this →
Life in the order the records give it
Census1850
In the 1850 census of Davidson County, Tennessee, he is Thomas Wright, born about 1794, North Carolina, with Martha, born about 1797, Tennessee
Family parents, marriages, children, siblings
In the record
Generation 7 — Earl's earliest known
- S85History of Dallas County, Texas (1892), pp. 687–688 — the biography of James W. Wright, M.D. Two printed pages, read from the images 16 September 2026. Gives his birth near Nashville, Tennessee, 4 February 1825, son of Thomas and Martha A. (Tate) Wright; service in the Mexican War; medical study at Louisville and a degree at Nashville; his marriage 28 October 1848 to Lucy C. Brooks, of Davidson County, Tennessee, daughter of Moses T. and Nancy (Tate) Brooks; the family's emigration to Texas in 1850; and, on p. 688, his children — among them "Mary J., wife of David E. Coffman, of Taylor county." A subscription county history is a paid-for family account, not a vital record, and is weighed that way here. Its value is that it reaches the same couple from the opposite direction to the 1934 death certificate [S81]: the certificate names Mary Jane's parents, the history names Dr. Wright's daughter. Neither was derived from the other. The G6 generation it supplies — Thomas & Martha A. (Tate) Wright, Moses T. & Nancy (Tate) Brooks — rests on this book alone and stays Probable.