Susanna Wright

Susanna Wright (1697–1784) was an 18th-century American poet and pundit, botanist, business owner and legal scholar, who was influential in the political economy of Pennsylvania as one of the Thirteen Colonies and in the formation of the United States.

Wright was born in Warrington in the county of Lancashire, England, on Aug. 4, 1697, to the Quaker businessman John Wright and his wife Patience. She had two brothers, John Jr. and James, and two younger sisters, Elizabeth and Patience. In 1714, her parents emigrated to Pennsylvania, taking the three youngest children but leaving Wright in England to continue her education. She joined them in 1718. Her mother died four years later. Around 1724, her father began exploring the Conejohela Valley, and he settled his remaining family there a few years later. In 1730, he obtained a patent to operate what became known as Wright's Ferry on the lower Susquehanna River, and in 1738 he built the still extant Wright's Ferry Mansion for his children. Susanna Wright, who never married, lived in this area for the rest of her life, at first managing her father's household (he died in 1749) and later helping to take care of her brother James's family as well. In the 1740s, Wright moved into a mansion named Bellmont (since demolished), having been bequeathed a life interest in it by one of her father's partners in the ferry venture, Samuel Blunston.

Wright was well-educated, becoming multilingual (besides her native English, she knew Latin, French, and Italian) and displaying the wide-ranging scientific, agricultural, and literary interests typical of Enlightenment culture.

Among other pursuits she raised hops, hemp, flax, indigo, and silkworms, establishing the first silk industry in Pennsylvania and receiving an award from the Philadelphia Silk Society in 1771. Silk extracted from her several thousand silkworms was dyed locally and then sent to England to be woven into the heavier grades of silk cloth suitable for mantuas as well as the lighter grades needed for stockings. There is folklore that in the 1770s, Benjamin Franklin took a piece of Wright's cloth to Queen Charlotte of Britain as a gift. Wright wrote an essay on silkworm culture that was published posthumously. She also studied the medicinal uses of herbs and formulated medicines for her neighbors.

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