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The Wright Brothers
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Orville and Katharine on the porch at Hawthorn Hill, Oakwood, Ohio.
August 19, 1871 – January 30, 1948
Aviator and inventor, Orville was born in Dayton, Ohio, to Milton and Susan Koerner Wright. He was the sixth of seven children born to the Wrights, five of whom survived infancy. Orville attended school in Iowa, Indiana, and Dayton, where future poet Paul Laurence Dunbar was part of his class at Central High School. However, Orville never graduated from high school, having not earned several credits required for a diploma. Having already decided to pursue a career as a printer, Orville was not worried about lacking a diploma; instead, he and Wilbur established a printing shop near their home in west Dayton.
Orville and Wilbur’s shop printed advertising and news circulars for customers. From May of 1889 to August of 1890, they also edited and published two local newspapers, the West Side News and the Evening Item. The newspapers failed in the saturated Dayton market, but the printing shop fared well. It moved to larger quarters on the second floor of the new Hoover Block in 1890. It was there that the Wrights printed a short-lived paper for the local African American community, the Dayton Tattler, edited by Dunbar.
Though they maintained their print shop until 1899, when they sold their press and type, printing became an overly predictable business to Orville and Wilbur. In the spring of 1893, they responded to the bicycling craze sweeping the United States by opening a bicycle repair and sales shop. Business at the cycle shop did well, and it overtook the printing shop to become their primary source of income. While other companies produced most of the bicycles the Wrights sold, they also sold cycles made at their own shop. Few bicycles built by the Wrights exist today. The Wrights left the bicycle business in 1908.
Milton piqued the interests of Orville and Wilbur in 1878, when he gave them a toy helicopter after one of his trips to the west. The 1896 death of German aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal in a glider crash, rekindled the brothers’ latent interests in aviation. Drawing upon similarities between bicycling and flying, Orville and Wilbur began researching aerodynamics, propulsion, and control. Their research did not occur in a vacuum; they investigated the experiments of other aviation pioneers, writing to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., for suggestions of relevant readings in 1899. The Wrights progressed from kite to glider research and, valuing privacy while requiring consistently high winds, moved their glider and powered craft testing to the remote sand dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Research and development activities continued to take place at the cycle shop on West Third Street in Dayton. Through experimentation at the cycle shop using a small, homemade wind tunnel, the Wrights designed the airplane that made the first controlled, powered, sustained flight on December 17, 1903. Experimentation and flight testing over the next decade at Huffman Prairie, eight miles (13 km) east of Dayton, and at Kitty Hawk, resulted in the development of practical airplanes that could remain aloft for as long as fuel reserves permitted.
Orville and Wilbur were wary of competitors copying their designs while patents pended and did not fly between late 1905 and the spring of 1908. Orville returned to the air that spring to conduct airplane trials for the U.S. Army, while Wilbur ventured to France to conduct trials for potential French investors. The Wrights signed a contract with the U.S. Army stating that they would provide an airplane capable of flying for one hour at a speed of forty miles per hour (64 km/h) for $25,000 without performance incentives. While the trials at Fort Myer in Arlington, Virginia, were generally successful, one flight ended abruptly when Orville’s plane crashed. The accident seriously injured Orville and killed his passenger, Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge. Orville’s injuries, which included a broken thigh and broken pelvis, gave him pain for the remainder of his life. He and sister Katharine joined Wilbur in France after his injuries healed.
In 1909, the Wrights and several prominent industrialists created the Wright Company to market Wright airplanes. Wilbur became the company’s first president, with Orville as one of two vice-presidents (Andrew Freedman being the other). Orville became president of the Wright Company upon Wilbur’s death of typhoid fever in 1912. Orville also served as executor of his brother’s estate.
In the years after Wilbur’s death, Orville became an elder statesman among aviators. He, Katharine, and Milton moved into Hawthorn Hill, a mansion in the Dayton suburb of Oakwood, in 1914. Orville sold his interests in the Wright Company in 1915, remaining with it for a year as a consulting engineer. He also built a laboratory on Broadway in west Dayton, close to the last site of the Wrights’ cycle shop and the family’s former home at 7 Hawthorne Street. Orville worked on a variety of projects at this laboratory, designing devices to ease tasks around Hawthorn Hill. He also served on several aviation commissions and boards, including that of the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, the predecessor agency of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Orville, who never married, died in Dayton of a heart attack on January 30, 1948 and is buried at Woodland Cemetery.
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April 16, 1867 – May 30, 1912
Aviator and inventor, Wilbur was born near Millville, Indiana, to Milton Wright and Susan Koerner. He was the third of seven children born to the Wrights, five of whom survived infancy. Wilbur moved often as a child due to his father’s ministry in the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, and he attended primary schools in Iowa and Indiana. He attended high school in Richmond, Indiana, but did not receive his diploma with the rest of the class of 1884 as his family moved to Dayton, Ohio, before his commencement ceremonies. In Dayton, Wilbur enrolled in the college preparatory program at Central High School, but a freak hockey injury during the winter of 1885-1886 caused him to convalesce at home for three years. During those years he nursed his ill mother, who died of tuberculosis in 1889, and read widely in his father’s extensive library.
In 1889, Wilbur and brother Orville – four years his junior – decided to form a business partnership and open a printing shop. Between May of 1889 to August of 1890, they published two local newspapers, the West Side News and the Evening Item. The newspapers failed in a saturated journalistic market, but their printing shop fared better. In 1890, they moved it to new quarters in the recently-built Hoover Block on West Third Street near the Wright family home. It was there that the Wrights printed the Dayton Tattler, a short-lived newspaper for the local African American community that was edited by a high school acquaintance of Orville’s, Paul Laurence Dunbar. Dunbar later gained national renown for his poetry.
Though printing became an overly predictable business to Wilbur and Orville, they maintained their shop until 1899, when they sold their press and type. Meanwhile, in the spring of 1893, they responded to the bicycling craze sweeping the United States by opening a bicycle repair and sales shop. Business at the cycle shop boomed, and it overtook the printing shop to become their primary business. While other companies produced most of the bicycles the Wrights sold, they also sold cycles made at their own shop. Few bicycles built by the Wrights exist today. The Wrights left the bicycle business in 1908.
Milton piqued the interests of Wilbur and Orville in aviation in 1878, when he gave them a toy helicopter after one of his trips in the west. The 1896 death of German aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal in a glider crash, rekindled the brothers’ latent interests in flying. Drawing upon similarities between bicycling and flying, Wilbur and Orville began researching aerodynamics, propulsion, and control. Their research did not occur in a vacuum; they investigated the experiments of other aviation pioneers, writing to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., for suggestions of relevant readings in 1899. The Wrights progressed from kite to glider research and, valuing privacy while needing consistently high winds, moved glider experimentation to the sand dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Research and development activities took place at the cycle shop on West Third Street in Dayton. Through experimentation at the cycle shop using a small, homemade wind tunnel, the Wrights designed the airplane that made the first powered, controlled, sustained flight on December 17, 1903. Experimentation and flight testing over the next decade at Huffman Prairie, eight miles (13 km) east of Dayton, and at Kitty Hawk, resulted in the development of practical airplanes that could remain airborne for as long as fuel reserves permitted.
Wary of competitors copying their designs while patents pended, Wilbur and Orville did not fly between late 1905 and the spring of 1908. That spring, they signed a contract with the U.S. Army for an airplane capable of flying for one hour at a speed of forty miles per hour and negotiated an agreement with French entrepreneurs interested in selling Wright airplanes in France. While Orville remained in the United States for the trial flights for the Army, Wilbur traveled to Europe to demonstrate their invention. Wilbur erased widespread doubts concerning the new technology and quickly became a celebrity, attracting attention from royalty and the elites of European society.
In 1909, the Wrights and several prominent industrialists created the Wright Company to produce and market Wright airplanes. Wilbur became the first president of the company, which maintained a factory and testing facility in Dayton. Wilbur also led efforts to protect the patents that he and Orville received for their inventions, filing lawsuits in the United States and Europe against perceived infringers. These lawsuits brought mixed results to the Wrights.
Amid his business and legal activities, Wilbur developed typhoid fever in early May of 1912, likely from eating contaminated oysters. He grew sicker throughout the month and died at 7 Hawthorne Street on May 30, ending what his father described in his diary as “A short life, full of consequences.” Wilbur, who never married, is buried at Dayton’s Woodland Cemetery.
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Katharine Wright Haskell
August 19, 1874 -March 3, 1929
The only surviving daughter of Milton and Susan Koerner Wright, Katharine was born in Dayton, Ohio, at the Wright residence on Hawthorne Street. The youngest of the Wright siblings (more than thirteen years younger than eldest brother Reuchlin), Katharine developed close relationships with the younger of the four brothers, Wilbur and Orville. With the death of Susan Wright in 1889, Katharine assumed much of the responsibility for managing the Wright household, especially during Milton's frequent absences. While Milton was rather demanding of Katharine in domestic matters, instructing her in household tasks in letters sent from across the United States, he did not want her to neglect her intellectual development. Katharine attended Dayton's Central High School and entered Oberlin College in 1893. She graduated from Oberlin with a bachelor's degree in 1898 and eventually obtained a job as a teacher of Latin and English at Dayton's Steele High School. Katharine taught there until 1908.
Katharine left teaching in September of 1908, after the crash of a Wright airplane piloted by Orville during a demonstration flight for the U.S. Army at Fort Myer, Virginia; a crash that killed Lt. Thomas Selfridge. She stayed with Orville during his convalescence, and after his recovery traveled with him to meet Wilbur in France for a promotional tour. Katharine actively assisted her brothers' careers, serving as a confidant and sounding board.
Katharine's relationship with Orville, who never married, became especially close after the deaths of Wilbur in 1912 and Milton in 1917. She served as a director of the Young Woman's League of Dayton, supported efforts to gain women the right to vote, and remained active in Oberlin College affairs, leading its alumni group and gaining election to its board of trustees. She also married a college friend, Kansas City newspaper owner and editor Henry J. Haskell, at Oberlin on November 20, 1926. While Lorin Wright heartily approved of the marriage, it ruptured Katharine's relationship with Orville, who believed that through it Katharine rejected him as a brother. He refused to interact with the couple, who lived in Kansas City, shunning Katharine until days before her death from pneumonia on March 3, 1929. Orville asked Henry to allow Katharine to be buried in Dayton, and she was interred with her parents and brother in Woodland Cemetery.
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Wright Brothers Camp at Kitty Hawk
Kitty Hawk may have rose to national fame with the arrival of the Wright Brothers, but the region was home to salty locals for centuries before the Wrights took flight. From the long lost soundside communities in Kitty Hawk Woods to the historic lifesaving station that guarded the coastline, Kitty Hawk has plenty of stories to share.
Facts
Modern archeologists estimate that Kitty Hawk was occupied for centuries before European explorers first discovered the region in the late 1500s.
Evidence of Algonquin speaking tribes exist in modern day Southern Shores and near the western edge of the Wright Memorial Bridge. Other tell-tale signs have been spotted in Kitty Hawk Woods, close to Shallbank Point. In fact, even the name "Kitty Hawk" seems to have ties to these first natives, as the original name, Chickenhauk, was noted on a New World map as early as 1738 - well before the region was fully explored.
Kitty Hawk would never receive the mass migration of settlers like nearby Roanoke Island and the North Carolina mainland, but a handful of New World residents were brave enough to set up a home in the region. Maps from the 1700s and 1800s note handfuls of privately owned plantations and residences, as well as a schoolhouse and other small businesses that's served the community.
This under-the-radar reputation would change when the Wright Brothers arrived in the region in 1900, and stayed for three years to perfect their powered flight experiments. While the historic December 17th First Flight actually launched via the sand dunes of neighboring Kill Devil Hills, Kitty Hawk nevertheless became famous as the birthplace of flight.
After the Wright Brothers passed through the area and made national headlines, Kitty Hawk somewhat retreated back to its quiet existence. The 1910s and 1920s were marked by the arrival of lumber businesses who harvested the Kitty Hawk Woods area.
Once the first Wright Memorial Bridge was constructed in the 1930s, linking the off-shore beach town to the mainland, tourism began to steadily develop. This would continue in the following decades, (and coincide with multiple Wright Memorial Bridge renovations), until eventually Kitty Hawk would be in the national spotlight once again - this time as one of the premier vacation destinations along the Outer Banks.
Events
Kitty Hawk's history dates back hundreds if not thousands of years, and the following timeline provides a brief overview of this small town's national claims to fame, or landscape-changing events.
Pre-1600s - Small communities of Native Americans live on the soundside of Kitty Hawk. These communities are located in the Kitty Hawk Woods and close to the Currituck Sound waters adjacent to the Wright Memorial Bridge
July 1584 - Captain Phillip Armadas find an entry to the New World through the North Banks, passing within miles of modern day Kitty Hawk.
1580s - More vessels would pass by the area, en route to proposed settlements on Roanoke Island.
1665 - A minor plantation is established on Colington Island, which is found on the southside of Kitty Hawk Bay .
1738 - Kitty Hawk is referenced on the James Wimble map as its original Native American moniker, "Chickenhauk."
1750s and beyond - Notations suggest that Kitty Hawk is home to a very small handful of minor plantations, like the home of local Richard Etheridge.
1800s - A small number of residents live in Kitty Hawk, participating in maritime trade and sustenance farming and fishing. An 1840s map notes a distribution of homes and structures throughout Kitty Hawk Woods, which includes a small schoolhouse.
1874 - The original Kitty Hawk Lifesaving Station is constructed along the oceanfront. The station is part of a number of "new" lifesaving stations along the Outer Banks to assist shipwrecked mariners.
1878 - The original Kitty Hawk Post Office is constructed near Kitty Hawk Bay .
September 1900 - Wilbur Wright, an Ohio bicycle mechanic, arrives in Kitty Hawk to begin experiments with powered flight.
1900 - The town of Kitty Hawk, when the Wrights first arrive, is a small community of roughly 60 families that are concentrated along the soundside.
December 17th, 1903 - The Wright Brothers triumphantly telegraph their successful First Flight to the world via the Kitty Hawk Weather Station.
1910s - Industrialists target Kitty Hawk as a good locale to procure lumber for the timber industry. Acres of trees are subsequently cut down in Kitty Hawk Woods. This trade would carry on for several subsequent decades.
Late 1920s - A toll bridge is constructed to link Roanoke Island with Nags Head, and a longer toll bridge is built across the Currituck Sound, connecting Point Harbor with Kitty Hawk. A paved road is built as well, laying the foundation for the ensuing tourism boom.
1930s - The first Wright Memorial Bridge is commissioned, linking the northern Outer Banks with the Currituck County mainland. The wooden structure allowed hundreds of visitors to slowly access the OBX shorelines.
1966 - The "new" Wright Memorial Bridge is opened, which is built out of concrete and can withstand winds of up to 55 mph.
1960s and 1970s - Kitty Hawk's growth is at its highest as cottages are built along the oceanfront Beach Road. Many of these beach homes are still standing, and are still popular with tourists.
1981 - The Town of Kitty Hawk is incorporated. This new "Town of Kitty Hawk" would later be responsible for preserving 461 scenic acres of the natural Kitty Hawk Woods.
1984 - The Kitty Hawk Lifesaving Station is added to the National Register of Historic Places.
1995 - The third and final Wright Memorial Bridge is opened, which is a 4-lane structure that can accommodate thousands of vehicles daily.
2000s and Beyond - Kitty Hawk becomes home to one of the newest premier hotels on the Outer Banks. Rental home communities are constructed along the soundside region of Kitty Hawk Woods, but much of the region - which was the original home for Kitty Hawk natives - is quietly and carefully preserved.
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I've not quite gotten to her marriage yet in the book, but I agree that they had a very close relationship and I suspect that might have been more typical of the times then, than now.


Bishop Milton Wright
November 17, 1828 – April 3, 1917
Milton, a bishop in the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, was born in Rush County, Indiana, to farmers Dan Wright, Jr., and Catharine Reeder. He was their fifth child (of an eventual seven) and fourth son. Dan Wright was a teetotaler who accepted lower payments when he sold his corn, so it would not be made into whiskey, and an uncompromising abolitionist. Milton also supported these causes, transmitting these values to his children. At the age of 12, Milton moved with his family to a farm in Fayette County, Indiana. It was while working in the fields of his parents’ farm at the age of 15 that he experienced a religious conversion. In 1848, the Reverend Joseph Ball baptized Milton into the Church of the United Brethren in Christ. In 1850, the United Brethren licensed Milton to preach. He was admitted to the church’s local governing body in 1853 and was ordained as a minister in 1856. While a student at Hartsville University in 1853, Milton met Susan C. Koerner. After courting for several years, and after Milton served as a missionary for the United Brethren in the western United States, they married in Indiana on November 24, 1859. Milton and Susan had seven children, five of whom survived infancy. Susan died in 1889 of tuberculosis; Milton never remarried.
Milton and his family first moved to Dayton in 1869 when he became editor of the United Brethren periodical, The Religious Telescope. His prominence within his denomination grew, and in 1877 Milton’s colleagues elected him bishop. The next year his duties expanded to include the administration of the church’s Western conferences. He and Susan moved their family to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to allow Milton to live closer to the churches he served. Milton cared greatly about the intellectual development of his children and maintained a large and varied library in which they read. His gift of a toy helicopter to Wilbur and Orville in 1878 helped develop their interest in aviation.
The Wright family returned to Dayton, home of the United Brethren’s publishing house, for a final time in 1884 when Milton desired to live closer to the United Brethren headquarters and publishing house during the culmination of years of theological conflict between Radical and Liberal elements of the church. Milton, a leader of United Brethren members known as Radicals who were loyal to the denomination’s old constitution, was instrumental in an 1889 denominational schism. Milton was a respected elder statesman of the United Brethren in Christ – Old Constitution until his retirement from the active ministry in 1905.
Milton continued to live with sons Wilbur and Orville and daughter Katharine after his wife’s death in 1889. He flew once, with Orville at Huffman Prairie in 1910, and moved with Orville and Katharine to Hawthorn Hill in Oakwood in 1914. He conducted extensive genealogical research into the ancestry of his family and maintained a diary that chronicled nearly sixty years of his life. Milton died at Hawthorn Hill on April 3, 1917. He is buried in Dayton’s Woodland Cemetery.
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Scientist
Enshrined 1963
1832-1910
A self-taught engineer (and a very good one), Chanute designed the first railroad bridge over the Missouri River, as well as the Union Stockyards in Chicago and Kansas City. When his interest in aviation blossomed, it rapidly grew into an obsession. Chanute became a tireless and selfless champion of the invention of the airplane. He collected aviation research and made it available to all who requested it. In 1894, he published a compendium of early aviation experiments that served to inspire, among others, Orville and Wilbur Wright.
Chanute published his classic book Progress in Flying Machines in 1894.
In 1896 he began to search for automatic flight control by designing and building a series of gliders which flew successfully.
He was the individual who made Europe aware of the success of the Wright Brothers.
Biography
Chanute had attained an outstanding reputation as civil engineer when, in 1875, he visited Europe and learned of the extensive efforts being made there, particularly by F.H. Wenham in England, to develop mechanical flight.
Not until he retired from his engineering business in 1889 did Chanute have opportunity for personal study and experiment in aeronautics. With the same analytical persistence that had made him a successful engineer he undertook to learn what had gone before. The result was his groundbreaking book, Progress in Flying Machines, published in 1894.
In 1896 at Dune Park, Indiana, about 60 miles from his home in Chicago, he began experiments with gliders, three of which were of his own design and two designed by others. Chanute’s advanced age prevented him from piloting them himself but his scientific observations of the glides by his assistants, and his generous sharing of the results broadened interest and advanced the art.
Not satisfied just to record the achievements of others, Chanute began in 1896 to search for automatic flight control by designing and building a series of gliders which an assistant successfully flew along Lake Michigan’s shore. In 1901 he visited the Wright Brothers and encouraged them in their gliding experiments, typifying his role as a collector and disseminator of aeronautical information and demonstrating his faith in the ultimate success of man to achieve powered flight.
To Octave Chanute, for outstanding contributions to aviation through his compilation of the aeronautical accomplishments of the pioneers of flight, his demonstration of successful man-carrying gliders, and his valuable counsel to others engaged in flight research, this award is most solemnly and respectfully dedicated.
Octave Chanute died on November 23rd, 1910.
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1898 -- The Wright home at 7 Hawthorne Street in Dayton, Ohio.
The Wright family home at 7 Hawthorn Street in west Dayton was where much of the creative thinking and planning behind the world’s first airplane took place. Wilbur and Orville added the shutters and built the wraparound porch. They resided at the Hawthorn Street house with their father and sister until Wilbur’s death in 1912.
Henry Ford purchased the house, along with the Wrights’ bicycle shop, and moved them in 1937 to his Greenfield Village complex in Dearborn, Michigan, where they are open to the public.
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Citation
The Wright Brothers flying at Fort Myer, France, and Italy in 1908-1909. Includes the first motion pictures ever taken from an airplane. Footage from 1938 Army Air Corps film. Additional images from the papers of Wilbur & Orville Wright, Library of Congress. Music "Solace", 1909 by Scott Joplin. Performed by Bob Montalto, recorded by Bruce Dalzell. Edited by Kate Hagenbuch for the Engineers Club of Dayton Foundation.


I thought so too, Teri. Did you notice that that particular site on UTube also had several other things on the Wright Bros, flights? And several on the history of aviation that your husband might enjoy.


Thank you, Helga. I'm glad I found it, too. I went looking hoping there would be something like that. David McCullough writes so well about their flying and the manuevers they did that I wanted to kind of feel what it must have been like to watch those first flights.

I thought so too, Teri. Did you notice that that particular site on UTube also..."
I did!

Wonderful video! :)


I wondered that too but I think it was used because ragtime was pretty much at its height in those years and Solace was published in 1909. Marvin Hamlin used it along with Joplin's The Entertainer in the score of the movie The Sting in 1973.
Books mentioned in this topic
That Wright Family!: A "Neighborly" Look at the First Family of Aviation (other topics)The Flyers: In Search of Wilbur and Orville Wright (other topics)
Pocket-book of Aeronautics (other topics)
Progress in Flying Machines (other topics)
A Higher Moral and Spiritual Stand: Selected Writings of Milton Wright (Pietist and Wesleyan Studies) (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Ruth Lyons Brookshire (other topics)Noah Adams (other topics)
Octave Chanute (other topics)
Milton Wright (other topics)
Larry E. Tise (other topics)
More...
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