WRIGHT BROTHERS
Aeroplane Company
| Parents:
Milton Wright and Susan Catherine Koerner Wright,
married in 1859. |
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| For Milton Wright's ancestry, see: Wright Genealogy |
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 Milton Wright in the 1860s. |
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 Susan Wright in 1870. |
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| Siblings: Wilbur
and Orville were the third and sixth born of seven children. |
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| 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 Wright, age 17.
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| 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 Katherine manage the Wright Cycle company while their brothers were in Kitty Hawk. 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 died in 1939. |  Lorin Wright, age 16.
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| For a complete biography of
Wilbur Wright, see: Wright Story. |
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 Wilbur Wright, age 12.
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| For a complete biography of
Orville Wright, see: Wright Story. |
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 Orville Wright, age 8.
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| For more details about the life
of Katherine Wright, see: Katherine Wright. |
Katherine 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 Katherine and refused to come to the wedding. Henry and Katherine lived in Kansas City were he was editor of the Star newspaper. Two years after she married, Katherine 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 Katherine when she died in 1929. |  Katherine Wright, age 4.
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