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Author: Wright, Alexander

Biography:

WRIGHT, Alexander (1792-1854: ancestry.co.uk)

He was born on 19 Oct. 1792 and baptised on 4 Nov. at Falkirk, Scotland, the son of David Wright, a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, and his wife Agnes Cleugh, who had married in South Leith, Midlothian, in 1785. He may have attended the University of St. Andrews but did not graduate. He joined the Bengal Army on 22 Oct. 1811 (Ensign 1813, Lieut. 1815, Capt. 1829) and served in various regiments before being invalided in 1832 in the 72nd Regiment of Native Infantry. He retired on 1 Aug. 1834. He served in the Nepal War (1816), was at the siege and capture of Hathras (1817), and saw action against the Bhattis of Hariana (1818). He married Johanna Leonora Christina Gordon (1795-1857), a widow and the daughter of Daniel Anthony Overbeek (1765-1840), the last Governor of Chinsurah, Dutch Bengal, on 15 Oct. 1823 at Chinsurah. She had two sons with Alexander Wright, one of whom, William Wright, became a distinguished orientalist. (She was proficient in several oriental languages including Persian.) From 1827 to 1828, Alexander Wright spent eighteen months in New South Wales and at least two years (1832-4) in Tasmania, where his second son, Daniel, was born. At an unknown date, possibly in the late 1830s, the family returned to St. Andrews, Scotland, where Alexander Wright died on 24 Apr. 1854 and was buried at St. Andrew's Cathedral where there is a family memorial tablet. (ancestry.co.uk 22 Jan. 2022; Hodson 2: 291-2, 4: 528; Fife Herald 4 May 1854, 26 Feb. 1857; C. O. Skelton and J. M. Bulloch, Gordons Under Arms [1912] 214; "Wright, William," ODNB 22 Jan. 2022) AA

 

Other Names:

  • A. Wright
 

Books written (1):

Calcutta: printed at the Baptist Mission Press, 1829