• Milton Wright, born 1828. Minister in the United Brethren Church,  professor of theology,  editor of his church newspaper, and an elected Bishop in his church. In 1888, he broke with the liberal leadership of the United Brethren Church and started his own conservative sect, Church of the United Brethren, Old Constitution. Died in 1917.

• Susan Wright, born 1831.  Attended Hartville College in Indiana where she excelled in literature and science and was the top mathematician in her class. The daughter of a carriage maker, she was  skilled with tools and built household appliances and toys for her family. Died of tuberculosis in 1889.

• Reuchlin Wright, born 1861. He spent a year at Western College near Cedar Rapids, Iowa in 1879, then briefly taught elementary school . He spent another year at Hartville College, Indiana with his brother Lorin and took a job as a clerk in a lumberyard in Dayton, Ohio. He married Lulu Billheimer in 1886 and had a daughter, Catherine Louise, a year later. Reuch (pronounced Roosh) had a difficult time earning a living in Dayton, and moved to Kansas City in 1889 where he found work as a bookkeeper with another lumber company. That job proved a dead end, and he took another with a railroad.  In 1901, he moved to a farm near Tonganoxie, Kansas, where he raised cattle and seed corn. His daughter Catherine died soon after moving west, but Reuch and Lullu had three more children -- Helen Margaret, Herbert, and Bertha Ellwyn. He died in 1920.

Reuchlin later in life.

• Lorin Wright, born 1862. He spent some time on the Kansas frontier, then attended Hartville College, Indiana for a year in 1882. He found work as a bookkeeper for a carpet store in Dayton, Ohio and courted Ivonette Stokes. Lorin and Ivonette married in 1892 and had four children -- Milton, Ivonette, Leontine, and Horace . In 1893, he went to work for Wilbur and Orville in their print shop, and in 1900 helped Katharine manage the Wright Cycle company while their brothers were in Kitty Hawk. He also strated his own "street sprinkling" business to help make some extra money. (Before 1900, there were less than 12 miles of paved streets in Dayton and street sprinkling was necessary to keep the dust down in dry weather.) He visited Wilbur and Orville at Kitty Hawk in 1902, notified the press in 1903 after their first powered flights, and loaned them his barn to build the machine that eventually became the first United States military aircraft. In 1911, he helped Orville test the first airplane autopilot and, in 1915, he spied on Glenn Curtiss to gather information for the Wright patent suit against the rival airplane manufacturer.  After Orville sold the Wright Company, Lorin bought an interest in Miami Wood Specialties -- the company manufactured a toy that Orville designed. He also became a city commissioner in Dayton. He died in 1939.

Lorin later in life.

• Wilbur Wright, born 1867. Wilbur was an excellent student and athlete. He completed the requirements for a high school degree at Richmond High School in Richmond, IN, but never applied for a certificate, perhaps because his family moved to Dayton, OH just before graduation. In 1885, he took several college preparatory classes at Central High School in Dayton, Ohio with ambitions of going to Yale University, but he never attended college. Instead, he stayed home and nursed his sick mother until she died in 1889.  Afterwards, his brother Orville drew Wilbur into the newspaper business as editor of the West Side News and later, The Evening Item. When the newspaper business failed, Wilbur became a partner with Orville in a printing company, a bicycle repair shop, and a bicycle manufacturing company. In 1896, Wilbur and Orville became interested in aviation. They performed their first aeronautical experiments with kites in 1899, then built a series of gliders through 1902, developing an aerodynamic control system for airplanes while teaching themselves to fly. They added an engine to their aircraft in 1903 and made the first controlled, sustained powered flights on December 17 of that year. They continued to refine their invention until it was what they considered a "practical" airplane. They made the first public demonstrations of this machine to a group of Dayton residents on October 4, 1905. In 1908, they sold airplanes to the US Army and to a French syndicate, and demonstrated them to the public at large. In 1909, Wilbur flew before a million people at the Hudson-Fulton Celebration in New York City. The Wright brothers organized a company to manufacture airplanes in 1909, and they began to file patent infringement suits against other airplane manufacturers that were using their methods of aerodynamic control. Wilbur became the designated "expert witness" in these cases and traveled frequently to give testimony. Worn out, he contracted typhoid on one of his many journeys and died in Dayton on May 30, 1912 -- exactly 13 years after he began his first formal aviation experiments.

Wilbur later in life.

• Twins Otis and Ida Wright, born 1870, died in infancy

• Orville Wright, born 1871, died 1948. Orville was a good student during his elementary school years, but his grades suffered as he grew older and developed other outside interests. He loved carving and printing from woodcuts, and he apprenticed himself to a printer during the summer months after his family moved to Dayton. In 1889, the year his mother died, Orville decided not to return for his senior year of high school. Instead, he began printing his own newspaper, The West Side News, and enlisted his brother Wilbur as the editor. Later, he changed the weekly newspaper to a daily and called it The Evening Item. The Item folded after just a few months, Orville became a partner with Wilbur in a printing company, a bicycle repair shop, and a bicycle manufacturing company. In 1896, the brothers  became interested in aviation. They performed their first aeronautical experiments with kites in 1899, then built a series of gliders through 1902, developing an aerodynamic control system for airplanes while teaching themselves to fly. They added an engine to their aircraft in 1903 and made the first controlled, sustained powered flights on December 17 of that year. They continued to refine their invention until it was what they considered a "practical" airplane. They made the first public flights in this machine before a group of Dayton residents on October 4, 1905. In 1908, they sold airplanes to the US Army and to a French syndicate, and demonstrated them to the public at large. The Wright brothers organized a company to manufacture airplanes in 1909, with Wilbur as the President. When Wilbur died of typhoid in 1912, Orville reluctantly took over the company. He sold the company in 1915 and retired to follow his own interests. He was a consulting engineer on the first guided missile (the "buzz bomb") during World War 1 and was the co-inventor of "split flaps" used on dive bombers in World War 2. He was a lifelong board member on the National Advisory Council on Aeronautics (NACA), which later became NASA -- the National Air and Space Administration. Much of his energies in his later years were spent protecting and preserving the honor that he and his brother Wilbur had earned in developing the first true airplanes.

Orville later in life.

• Katharine Wright, born 1874, shared her birthday with Orville Wright. She took her mother's place as head of the Wright household when she was just 15 and continued to serve as the mistress of the Wright house until 1926. She was the only one of the Wright children to finish college. She got her teaching degree from Oberlin College in 1898 and began teaching classical literature at Steele High School in Dayton, Ohio. She took a leave of absence from her teaching post when Orville was badly injured in an airplane accident in 1908 and never went back. She nursed Orville back to health, traveled to France with him to join their brother Wilbur, and flew with Wilbur in France for the first time. Thereafter, she was involved in her brothers' airplane business and was made an officer of the Wright Company in 1912 when Wilbur died.  After Orville sold the Wright Company in 1915, she continued to live with him until 1926. A chance meeting with an old college friend, Henry Haskell, sparked a romance late in her life and she decided to marry for the first time. Orville was enraged; he could not imagine life without Katharine and refused to come to the wedding. Henry and Katharine lived in Kansas City were he was editor of the Star newspaper. Two years after she married, Katharine contracted pneumonia. When she was on her deathbed, Lorin Wright managed to talk his brother Orville into making amends. Orville traveled to Kansas City and was with Katharine when she died in 1929.

Katharine later in life.