Photo Collection of
Alan Terry Wright

Introduction

I’m not sure when my enduring interest in family history began, but I know it was early. Perhaps it was when my great uncle, William Thomas “Uncle Will” Allee, stayed a day or two with us when I was a boy, at our home in Miller County, near Eugene.  He was a tall, imposing man, with a brush mustache and a deep, booming voice. My mother, Ruby Allee Wright, quizzed him at length about her Allee heritage, while eagerly copying down, in long hand, his wealth of knowledge on the subject.

Or, it may have been my Grandpa Allee’s (Horace Greeley Allee, Uncle Will’s youngest brother) bedtime story about his father, Nathan Allee (“Pap”) and a cousin, Nicholas “Nick” Allee’s, escape from General Sterling Price’s raiders, near California, Missouri, late in the Civil War. The fearful sight of Price’s charging cavalry, sabers gleaming in the morning sun, accompanied by blood curdling oaths and “rebel yells,” was too much for the young Allees. Discretion being the better part of valor, they fled on thoroughbred horses obtained in Kentucky before the War. Clearing rail fences at break-neck speeds, they outdistanced the Greycoats and lived to ripe old ages.

My Dad, Garcia “Garsy” Wright, filled my head with the lore of frontiersmen and Indian fighters like Daniel Boone, Lewis Wetzel, Simon Kenton, and the dreaded turncoat and renegade, Simon Girty. Dad’s “first person” description of the famous “Great Train Raid,” by James J. Andrews & Union Army volunteers, deep into the Confederacy, filled my imagination with wonder. I did not fail to notice the reverence with which dad excavated from the deep gravel of Cole County’s Bois Bruhle creek, shards of wood from the ruins of his Grandfather Wright’s (James Lawrence Wright) milldam and watermill, likely built sometime in the 1840’s.

But, if there was one single klieg light that lit up the cavities in my young, spongy, and impressionable mind, it would have been turned on at the home of James Earl Thompson and his wife, Mamie. The couple, along with an older child or two, lived in their lovely self-built stone house on a hill above Dry Creek, a tributary of the Little Saline, in Miller County. Something of a renaissance man, “Earl” was a talented dabbler in music, photography, genealogy, recordings, and was the author of his own biography. I was a sophomore in high school that day, when Earl handed me a sheaf of typed pages, and asked if I could find a way to make some copies. Enlisting the help of an older friend in “Publications” class at school, we dutifully typed “ditto” stencils and made copies of what turned out to be a long poem. It was entitled, “Lines Occasioned by the Death of My Father, The Reverend Thomas Thompson,” written by my great, great, grandfather, Henry Tomson in 1827. (Henry changed his name from “Thompson” to “Tomson” shortly before his death in 1862.) One stanza leaped off the page:

When British might, in times of old,
Strove to impose conditions hard,
My father, then both young and bold
Went forth his Country’s cause to guard.

Well, that did it. A warm tide seemed to rise from my toes to scalp. A friendly, loving, welcoming feeling came over me. The poem signified much more than all those lifeless names and dates sprinkled throughout our American History textbook. This was my own grandparent telling of his father’s service in the Revolutionary War! It was as if a kind and genial hand had reached out to touch me, and a voice asked me to pause---and consider the past. Later research would reveal that Private Thomas Thompson’s 2nd Maryland Brigade, “Of Foot,” was one of the most reliable and valiant in General Washington’s Continental Army. I was hooked.

In the course of researching family history, collecting and preserving the images of those who have gone before became an obsession. Hesitant to borrow old photos, for fear of damage or loss, I went “high tech.” Using my old reliable Nikon-F 35 mm camera (the camera of choice for combat photographers in Vietnam), with a set of close-up lens extension tubes, I went to work. Employing a copy stand with lights, a shutter release cable, and the finest grain black & white film available, I copied friends’ and relatives’ priceless photos right in their homes. These forty-five year old images compare favorably with today’s high resolution scans.

Credits

It is difficult to recall all those who graciously produced their family albums, picture boxes, and individual photos, while identifying the subjects as I photographed them. Here is a list of some. Most are now deceased. I thank them all:

Charles Isaac Wright, Centralia, MO
Wayne & Tirzah Wright, Aurora, MO
James Earl Thompson, Tuscumbia, MO
Bamber & Marcella Wright, Tuscumbia, MO
Milton & Opal Luttrell, Brumley, MO
Ruby Wright, Iberia, MO
Paul Wright & Annie Willoughby, Catawissa, MO
Larry and Patsy (Wright) Moore, Richland, MO
Fred and Lilly Dean (Wright) Hess, St. Louis, MO
Eather & Malone (Allee) Keeth, Tuscumbia, MO
William Thomas Allee’s daughter, Mary, State of CA (through lending of Nathaniel Green Allee family album)
Logan Allen, Tuscumbia, MO
Elmer Nichols, Nowata, OK
Archie Nichols, Coffeyville, KS
Roy Huegerich, St. Louis, MO
Mary (Lucas) Hoffstedter, Ballwin, MO
Clyde Jenkins, Tuscumbia, MO
Esther Sears, Tuscumbia, MO
Steven Lee Wright, Columbia, MO

Final Notes

Modern computer software has permitted the cropping, re-touching, and other improvement of these old photos in order to provide the best possible images.

These photos were scanned from the original negatives at high resolutions, permitting the viewer to copy and download these images and produce good prints at sizes from 5”X7” up to, in some cases, 11”X14”.  I claim no copyrights on these images but ask that they be used with good taste and judgment and that no attempts be made to remove the small watermark credit, signifying that I either copied the image from an original photo and enhanced it or materially enhanced an intermediate image from another source.

The initial batch of photos will have “gone up” on this site sometime in mid-2011. This will be a fraction of the whole collection. I expect to have the entire “Photo Collection of Alan Terry Wright” transferred to this Miller County Historical Society website by mid-2012.

Last, it is my opinion that the Miller County Historical Society Museum and Website, under the leadership of Dr. Joe Pryor, is one of the finest of its kind in the U.S. As such, I am pleased and honored that the Society has seen fit to accept this collection and make it available to web users and Museum visitors from throughout the Nation and the world.

Alan Terry Wright
St. Louis, MO, and
Pawleys Island, SC