Philemon Wright

Philemon Wright (September 3, 1760 – June 3, 1839) was a farmer, lumberman and entrepreneur who founded the Ottawa River timber trade in 1806. He was also founder of what he named Columbia Falls Village, mostly known as Wright's Town, Lower Canada (or Wrightstown) and Wright's Village to others, the first permanent settlement in the National Capital Region of Canada. Wright's Town, later became incorporated in 1875 and renamed Hull, Quebec, and then in 2002, as a result of a municipal amalgamation, it acquired its present name of the City of Gatineau.

Wright was born in Woburn, Massachusetts, into the family of Thomas Wright and Elizabeth Chandler, a large and prosperous Woburn family that had been among the town's founders, 120 years before. Philemon Wright was raised as a farmer.

At the young age of 16, in December 1775 he enlisted as a private in Capt. Wood’s Company of the 26th Continental Regiment. He fought in several battles including the Siege of Boston From March to June 1776, he was serving in the regiment in New York. On May 10, 1777, he was appointed a Corporal in Capt. Jesse Wyman’s Company, Colonel Josiah Whitney’s Regiment, serving at Point Judith, Rhode Island until July 10, 1777. He was promoted to Sergeant on May 26, 1777. On August 18, 1777, he was appointed 3rd Sergeant in Capt. Abraham Foster’s Company of Bullard’s Regiment of Militia. He served until November 30, 1777, fighting in the Saratoga Campaign.

Nicknamed "the Old Squire" by his employees and friends, Wright was once described by John Mactaggart as "about six feet high, a tight man, with a wonderfully strange, quick reflective wild eye”.

On May 16, 1782, Philemon Wright married Abigail Wyman, a Woburn woman whose ancestors were among the founding families of Charlestown, Massachusetts, in 1628. Charlestown would later become Boston. Philemon and Abigail would have a large family of 8 children. Their children (ages listed as of 1800, when they arrived in Hull Township) were: Philemon Jr., 18; Tiberius, 13; Abigail (Nabby, who died at 7 yrs.); Mary (Polly) 10; Ruggles, 8; Abigail, 6; Christopher Columbus, 2; Christiana, b. 1803.

Feeling the strain of overpopulation in Massachusetts, Wright first came to see the isolated and unsettled area of the Ottawa Valley in 1796, returned again in 1798, and once more in 1799. He finally decided that the best location for a new settlement would be next to the Chaudière Falls, near the intersection of the Tenàgàtino-sibi or Gatineau and Kitchi-sibi or Ottawa rivers, where he found thousands of acres of good soil and vast amounts of timber. He applied for the lands of the Township of Hull under the "leader and associates" regime and after swearing allegiance to the Crown, received the grant.

Wright used his natural leadership abilities to convince a group of Massachusetts settlers to come north with him. He sold his holdings in Woburn and led a group of 4 other families and 33 labouring men to the area, leaving on February 2, 1800, at the age of 39. With the help of a native Algonquin scout, who volunteered to help the group negotiate the treacherous voyage over ice from Kinodjiwan or Long-Sault at Carillon to the Akikodjiwan or Chaudière Falls, the group arrived on the western shore of the Gatineau River where it meets the Ottawa on March 7, 1800, and began to clear land. At first, their objective was to clear what was needed for homes and farmland for their survival. Two farms, the "Gateno Farm" (1800), as he named it, and the "Columbia Falls Farm" (1801) were the first to be cleared. Then, in 1801, at the foot of the Chaudière Falls, construction began on other enterprises. Wright preferred to call the falls the Columbia Falls, but the name never stuck. The name Columbia, however, was repeatedly used throughout the new settlement: Columbia Pond (now, Leamy Lake), the Columbia farm, the Columbia hotel, and Columbia road (now, St. Joseph blvd.).

Wright's settlement quickly became Wright's Town with the shops, mills and other enterprises that were built so that the small community would not be dependent on the expensive practice of importing goods from Montreal. Wright built a lumber mill, a hemp and grist mill and a smithy to fulfill their needs. When a fire burned down the smithy, he rebuilt it in stone, adding a trip hammer mill, four forges and four bellows operated hydraulically. He built a large bakehouse, shops for a shoemaker, a tailor, a bark grinding mill, as well as a tannery for curing leather. Always the opportunist, he also saw to it that a brewery and distillery were operating to slake the thirsts of the many employees he employed. Before long, he and his wife Abigail also saw to it that there was a teacher to teach all of the children in the community.