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Elizur Wright Collection - SP W60  

Biographical Sketch

Elizur Wright (1804-1885) was born in South Canaan, Connecticut, raised in Tallmadge, Ohio and graduated from Yale.  Although he aspired to become a minister he was more interested in studying science and mathematics than Hebrew and decided to accept a position at Western Reserve College in Hudson, Ohio.  In 1829, he was appointed Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at WRC and married Susan Clark.

In the 1830s, Western Reserve College was the location of fierce intellectual battles between Colonizationalists; the anti-slavery movement in favor of sending freed black to an African colony and the Immediatists; the anti-slavery movement in favor of immediate freedom and American citizenship for all slaves.  Wright was a member of the American Colonization Society but converted to the Immidiatist's cause becoming by the "summer of 1832, the preeminent immediatist of the West."  Wright published many essays in the Hudson Observer and Telegraph advocating Immediatism.  He resigned the shortly after his fellow abolitionist, Beriah Green did.  The final three years of Wright's four year tenure at WRC, were so divisive that enrollment and funding were negatively impacted and according to one historian, it "retarded the development of the college for the next twenty years."

Although Elizur continued working for abolition throughout the 1840s and 1850s his focus gradually shifted to the reform of the life insurance industry.  In the the 1850s, he was commissioned by the Massachusetts Hospital Life Insurance Company, based on his mathematical expertise, to gather information on English actuarial practices.  The publication in 1853 of Elizur's Valuation Tables

was a significant milestone in the evolution of the life insurance industry.  It figured the amount of each premium that should be held in reserve based on the life expectancy of the policy holder to ensure the company would remain solvent.  He also invented the arithmeter, a crude calculating device, and served as a member of the Board of Insurance Commissioners in Massachusetts.  He was tireless in work in the life insurance industry to ensure that policy holders were protected and that companies remained truthful about their practices as well as solvent earned him the title "the father of life insurance.'

His last reform project was to preserve Middlesex Fells.  Elizur owned and lived on land adjacent to the Fells seemed to find comfort in its natural beauty as he aged.  It appeared to help him through the deaths of several of his children and his beloved wife.  In November of 1885, Elizur suffered a stroke and died at the age of 81.  The preservation of the Fells, however was not accomplished in Elizur's lifetime but legislation in 1894 made 2,000 acres of this area a park.  

Sources and Further Reading

Goodheart, Lawrence. Abolitionist, Actuary, Atheist.  1990. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press.

Waite, Frederick, Clayton. Western Reserve University The Hudson Era. Cleveland, OH: Western Reserve University Press, 1943.

 

Wright, Philip, Green and Wright, Elizabeth, Q. Elizur Wright The father of life insurance. 1937. Chicago: University of Chicago.

Scope and Content

This collection contains publications by and about Elizur Wright.  They focus on his work with the insurance industry.  There are no personal documents or financial records.

Series Descriptions

Series 1. Newspaper Clipping

The article appeared in the Medford Mercury in August of 1931.  It reported on efforts to fund a memorial chair for the study of insurance at a major university in the United States.

 

Series 2. Publications by Elizur Wright 

This series contains two books:

Traps baited with orphans or What is the matter with life insurance published in 1877 in Chicago.

Elizur Wright's Appeals for the Middlesex Fells and the forests with a sketch of what he did for both by his daughter Ellen Wright, published in 1904 by Ellen Wright.

Series 3. Publications about Elizur Wright.

This series contains seven issues of the American Conservationist published by the American Conservation Company.  Each issue contains an article about Elizur Wright.  The issues are:

March 1931, June 1931, July 1931, August 1931, September 1931, April 1932, February 1933.

Provenance

Collected by Rosalind Wright Harris the great-granddaughter of Elizur Wright.  They were donated by the descendents of Beriah Green and Elizur Wright in memory of Hudson resident and friend, Agnes K. Wright in November 2000. 

Related Materials

See also the Beriah Green Collection - SP G50.  Beriah Green was a friend of Elizur Wright's and a fellow abolitionist

See also the anti-slavery books in the Brown Collection.

See also the image of Elizur Wright's house in the photograph collection.

From Other Institutions

The Baker Library at the Harvard Business School also holds several collections of Elizur Wright's personal and business papers.

Administrative Information

Processing Information: Joanne O'Dell processed this collection in March, 2005.

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