(NEW YORK LONG ISLAND) A family register and notebook kept

Sale 2486 - Lot 350

Price Realized: $ 438

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 250 - $ 350

(NEW YORK--LONG ISLAND.) A family register and notebook kept by the Wright-Weekes family of Oyster Bay. [15] manuscript pages. Folio, contemporary vellum, worn; moderate edge wear, one leaf detached. Vp, 1721-1840

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The original owners of this volume were the Wright family of the Oyster Bay area in Long Island: first a John Wright in 1721, then Gideon Wright in 1737, then another John Wright (1717-1758) who recorded his own children through 1757. The family also recorded several interesting memoranda: "A great and wonderful earthquake" was noted on 7 December 1737, and in June 1743 "a great & numerous company of worms that did eat the corn and grass but continued but a short time." The family had some Rhode Island ties, noting "Daniel Wheightman went home from Hog Island . . . on board ye schooner with Major James Brown 1723." John Wright transcribed an 8-page religious letter he had received from John Hammett of Rhode Island dated 29 December 1721 which takes up half the volume. Hammett, a former attorney general, addressed rumors that he had joined the Quakers. The first 5 pages in the volume were apparently stitched in later, and contain family records for Edmund and Elizabeth (Wright) Weekes (also of Oyster Bay) and their descendants from 1736 through 1840.