Los Angeles County
Biographies
HAROLD BELL WRIGHT
WRIGHT, HAROLD BELL, Author, Meloland, California, was born in Rome, Oneida County, N.Y., May 4, 1872, the son of William A. Wright and Alma T. (Watson) Wright. He married Frances Elizabeth Long, at Buffalo, N.Y., July 18, 1899. They have three sons, Gilbert Munger, Paul Williams, and Norman Hall Wright.
Mr. Wright is of Anglo-Saxon descent on the paternal side of the family, but his maternal ancestors were French. The first of the family to settle in America came over about 1640 and located in New England, but later generations moved to the Mohawk Valley of New York, where certain of the French Huguenots had settled, and there his parents were married.
Mr. Wright has made his position among the great writers of his time solely by his own efforts. His father was a contracting carpenter, a practical man possessed of great moral force; his mother was more of an artistic temperament; and the characteristics of each were blended in the son. The rudiments of his education Mr. Wright obtained from his mother, who also encouraged in him talent as a painter which displayed itself when he was a mere child. She died when he was ten years of age, and Mr. Wright continued his studies in the common schools of the district. Later, he spent two years in the preparatory department of Hiram College, at Hiram, Ohio, but did not graduate and he is, for the most part, self-educated.
Mr. Wright began his career in 1887 as a painter and decorator and followed this vocation until 1892, when he turned his attention seriously to landscape painting, to which he devoted himself for five years, but relinquished it in 1897 to enter the ministry. He was appointed pastor of the Christian (Disciple) Church at Pierce City, Missouri.
From the beginning of his ministerial career, which continued for about eleven years, Mr. Wright’s labors were marked by the same sincerity and zeal that had characterized his previous efforts. He remained in Pierce City about a year, then was transferred to Pittsburg, Kansas, where he worked for five years.
At the end of this period he was called to the Forest Avenue Church in Kansas City, Missouri, a charge he held until 1905. He next had a church at Lebanon, Missouri, in the Ozark Mountains, for two years, and in 1907 was appointed to the pastorate of the Christian (Disciples) Church at Redlands, California.
This brought about a turning point in his career, for in 1908 he resigned and joined the pioneers of the great Imperial Valley of California. He has since made his home there, devoting himself to his writing and the management of his ranch, known as Tecolote Rancho, one of the picturesque places of the Southwest.
Several years prior to his removal to California, Mr. Wright had fixed a place for himself in the literary world through his first book, “That Printer of Udell’s” (1902). This story, written while he was engaged in his religious duties, attracted attention to the author because of the originality of his style and his power of description. His second work, “The Shepherd of the Hills” (1907), was a tale of the Ozarks and was hailed as a masterpiece.
In 1909, Mr. Wright published “The Calling of Dan Matthews,” a powerful story, surpassing his previous efforts in character study. In 1910 he gave to the world “The Uncrowned King.”
The greatest of all Mr. Wright’s works was published in 1911—“The Winning of Barbara Worth.” This story of the reclamation of the Imperial Valley has been declared the greatest novel of modern times and ran more than a million copies. The Imperial Valley and the men who made it gave Mr. Wright the inspiration for this powerful story. Arriving in the country in 1907, he witnessed many of the events which form the main features, and is generally believed to have drawn his characters from life, thus making of “The Winning of Barbara Worth” an almost exact history of the section.
As late as 1900, the vast expanse of land known as the Imperial Valley was part of the great Colorado Desert, but through the efforts of a small band of pioneers it was reclaimed by irrigation, and a quarter of a million acres of dry land transformed into prosperous ranches and towns. However, all that had been achieved by the pioneers was threatened with destruction through the break of the Colorado River from its natural channel. It was only saved by heroic effort.
To Mr. Wright the magic-like work of the builders and protectors of Imperial Valley made a most remarkable appeal and into “The Winning of Barbara Worth” he wrote an epic of the desert.
In 1912, Mr. Wright produced another work, “Their Yesterdays,” a beautiful symbolic story in which love and goodness are idealized. This will be followed by “The Eyes of the World.”
Mr. Wright’s books, in each of which he has some message for his fellows, made a wonderful appeal to readers the world over, and their combined sales exceeded three million copies’(sic) “The Shepherd of the Hills” has been dramatized and others are being prepared for stage production.
Between Mr. Wright and his publisher, Mr. E. W. Reynolds, there exists a bond of extraordinary sympathy. Their relations are those of friends and partners.
Transcribed
9-25-10 Marilyn R. Pankey.
Source: Press
Reference Library, Western Edition Notables of the West, Vol. I, Page 513, International News Service, New York, Chicago, San
Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Atlanta.
1913.
© 2010 Marilyn R. Pankey.
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