From: "robin1@ns.sympatico.ca" Subject: George Henry Wright Date: July 29, 2020 at 12:42:58 ADT To: Dan MacKay Cc: Robin work Reply-To: "robin1@ns.sympatico.ca" Hello, Daniel. I just had a visit from my cousin Lucille (my mother's niece) to look through old family photos. She has entrusted me with a stash of negatives so that I can try to get them scanned. Their format is too large to fit in the scanner I have at home (which accommodates only 35 mm and smaller), so I will be talking to photographer friends about options. Lucille reminded me that she had given me a disc with a 60-page document based largely on the letters between my grandparents before and after their marriage in 1913. My grandmother, née Mary Caroline Murphy, was born in Halifax to parents originally from Chezzetcook. Although she spoke English until she married my grandfather, Willie Comeau, and moved to Saulnierville, she was Acadian as well as Irish (Chezzetcook, as you may know, is an Acadian community), and her grandmother spoke French to her as a child. Her father, Frédéric Murphy, owned a tailor shop at 152 Upper Water Street, and the family moved to Blowers St in 1909. Anyway, in a letter to my grandfather dated 21 April 1912, Mary writes “ This Titanic disaster is something that one hates to speak of. I knew George Wright well. It is certainly very sad.” At that time, she was living at 39 Maynard Street, but Willie's half-brother Alphonse lived at 11 Bland Street, very close to Wright's home, so Mary may have often been in Wright's neighbourhood. I don't have the original letters, although Lucille does. I have suggested that she give them to the NS Archives, which I think she will look into. It doesn't sound likely that there would be more in them about Wright, but you never know. I don't know how Mary came to know George, but she had studied at Maritime Business College, starting in 1909, so perhaps she met him through her father's business. I don't know what Mary did after graduating, but she may well have performed clerical duties at her father's tailor shop. Halifax was even smaller then, and two of the major buildings that Wright had built, designed by Dumeresq, were the Marble Wright Building (1672 Barrington St.) and The Saint Paul Building, (1684 Barrington St., formerly the home of JW Doull's bookstore). One is in the block at the corner of Blowers and Barrington, very close to the family home, and the other one block north of there, at Prince, spitting distance from the tailor shop. Who knows: maybe Frédéric's shop made suits for George. Maybe he was wearing one when the Titanic went down. Knowing your interest in Wright as a "long-time bachelor", I thought you might find interesting this connection between him and my family. Cheers, Robin