WRIGHT BROTHERS - Key Persons
Arthur Cunningham was also a football player for Oberlin College. He's in the middle row, second from the left.
Milton was an effective editor, letting many voices be heard in the Telescope, not just those he agreed with. However, he did continue to champion his stand against secret societies. He also took up the causes of women's rights and temperance. The United Brethren Church held their General Conference every four years and in 1873 the conservatives in the church hierarchy were concerned that the liberals had the support to lift the church ban on secret societies. One of the Church's by-laws stated that any such amendment in the fundamental rules - called the Discipline - had to be approved by two-thirds of the majority voting. At the conference, the conservatives argued this meant two-thirds of the entire church membership. The amendment was tabled for another four years. The Church of the United Brethren continued as it had before, Milton remaining in place as the editor of the Religious Telescope. In 1874, Susan gave birth to their second (first surviving) daughter Katharine at 7 Hawthorn Street. Katharine was their last child.
Bishop Milton Wright formed his own Constitutional Committee from conservatives and the group held annual meetings as they prepared for the showdown that was coming in 1889. He also started yet another newspaper to champion the conservative cause, the Christian Conservator. His wife Susan, meanwhile, continued to slowly succumb to tuberculosis. Wilbur, who was in his senior year of high school when the family moved back to Dayton, decided to forego college. He spent more and more of his time nursing his mother. By 1886, she was an invalid.
Wilbur also joined in his father's fight, keeping tabs on the committee that was rewriting the church constitution while Milton was out of town. He also wrote some articles and leaflets for the conservative cause that not only echoed Milton's belief, but were surprising cogent and erudite for a man who was just out of his teens. All this effort went for naught. The liberal constitution was adopted by popular vote, despite the fact that over three-quarters of the United Brethren did not vote at all. The conservatives insisted that this meant the new constitution had not received the required two-thirds of the membership vote; the liberals pointed out that well over two-thirds of those who had voted preferred the updated rules. The leaders of the Church gathered at the General Conference in York, Pennsylvania in 1889 for a final vote to accept or decline the new constitution. The vote was 111 to 20 to accept. Milton and 14 of the 20 dissenters walked out of the General Conference and formed their own church, the Church of the United Brethren, Old Constitution.
Milton returned to Dayton to find his wife Susan sinking. She died a little over a month later on July 4, 1889. Milton wrote in his diary, "...thus went out the light of my home." She was buried on July 6 in Woodlawn Cemetery and two days later Milton was back at work, arranging for the publication of the rules for the new church that he and his fellow dissenters had formed. By August 12 he was on the road again, off to Union City, Pennsylvania for the first General Conference of Church of the United Brethren, Old Constitution.
The legal wrangling over the division of church property began almost immediately. Even before the conference in Union City, Milton and his band of conservatives tried to secure the United Brethren publishing company, by far the most important asset owned by the Church. But the courts went against them and the liberals remained in possession of the business. At the conference, Milton was elected a Bishop and was put in charge of the litigations. It was a busy time for him; the division of assets would not be completely settled until 1900. And it was not particularly rewarding, As the cases concerning local church properties and buildings made their way into the State courts, all but one of the judgments went against the conservatives. More importantly, the conservatives lost an organizational structure and a labyrinth of interpersonal connections involving people, committees, businesses, and communities that had taken the better part of a century to build. All of this had to be rebuilt, and it took time, energy, and money.
With this weighing on him, it was admirable that Milton immediately noticed his younger sons' new-found new-found interest in aviation. But he had always been interested and involved in his children's affairs. As was their custom, he and Wilbur exchanged letters when Wilbur and Orville traveled to Kitty Hawk for the first time. Wilbur confessed that he hoped to make some money and perhaps achieve a little notoriety from his aerial experiments. Sister Katharine chimed in to the correspondence and assured her father that her brothers would not be reckless. Through all of their experiments and subsequent efforts to sell their invention, Milton's support was absolute. It's notable the when the Wrights made their first successful powered flights on December 17, 1903, they addressed the telegram that announced the event to their father. It was his duty and pleasure to inform the press.
At the same time his sons were becoming more prominent, Milton's fortunes were waning. Although he he was for all intensive purposes the savior of the Church of United Brethren, Old Constitution and the most prominent Bishop in the flock, his inability to compromise and often caustic personality eroded his support within the Church ranks. By 1905, the Church had quite enough of Milton Wright. These disagreeable feelings came to a head in the matter of Milliard F. Keiter. Mr. Keiter served as the Church's publishing agent, the same post that Milton had occupied just after the break with the liberals. In fact, Milton had promoted his son Wilbur to fill this post in the General Conference of 1893, but Wilbur lost to Keiter.
Keiter served two terms as publishing agent, from 1893 to 1901. He was looking forward to a third term, but a month before the General Conference Bishop Milton Wright, suspecting Keiter of fraud, ordered an audit of the publishing accounts. The auditor found a discrepancy of $6800 and Keiter was removed from his post. At his hearing in 1902, Keiter managed to convince Church officials that the discrepancy was due to sloppy accounting rather than deliberate fraud, but Milton would have none of it. He asked Wilbur to look over the books in 1902 and Wilbur found unmistakable evidence that Keiter had used church revenues to buy clothes, pay his own insurance, even purchase building materials for his home. Acting without the approval of church officials, Milton brought charges against Keiter in the public courts. The charges were dismissed - the particular wrongdoing that Milton had focused on was outside the Statute of Limitations. But Milton continued to dog Keiter.
His refusal to let the matter lie annoyed Church officials and turned them against him. Keiter saw his opportunity and struck back, charging Milton with a breach of the Discipline which instructed the Brethren to settle their differences with one another out of court. The White River Conference - the same conference within the Church that had made him a minister - tried him absentia for libel and demanded that he confess his sins. The affair continued to fester until the General Conference of 1905 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The church upheld the righteousness of Bishop Milton Wright against Keiter's charges, but at the same time they forced Milton into retirement by stripping him of his bishopric and other official church duties. At the age of 77, Milton Wright was no longer a force to be reckoned with.
He spent his final days with his family. As he had done for so long, he resided at 7 Hawthorn Street with Wilbur, Orville, and Katharine. He enjoyed his sons' success when the Wright brothers demonstrated their flying machine in Europe and America. On May 25, 1910, his son Orville took Milton on his first and only airplane flight, taking off from Huffman Prairie near Dayton, Ohio where Wilbur and Orville had perfected their invention. He was distraught when Wilbur died in 1912, convinced that his son was a victim of overwork and stress brought on by the likes of Glenn Curtiss and others who had usurped the Wright patent. He moved to Hawthorn Hill in Oakwood with Orville and Katharine in 1914. In 1916, he wrote in his diary that "my strength has left me..." and began a long, slow decline. He died in 1917 at age 89 and was buried next to his wife Susan and son Wilbur in Woodlawn Cemetery overlooking Dayton, Ohio.
Katharine Wright married Harry Haskell on November 20, 1926 in Oberlin. From the wedding she traveled directly to Kansas City. She never saw Hawthorne Hill again, although she remained in contact with Carrie and always knew how Orville was doing without her. And despite Orville's painfully selfish reaction, she was extremely happy with her new life. Harry's family welcomed her, particularly his son Henry to whom Katharine grew especially close. Good things happened, at least for a short while. The Kansas City Star was sold to its employees and Harry became a major stockholder as well as an officer in the publishing firm. More important, Harry's professional reputation as an editorial writer grew daily. The paper won a Pulitzer Prize for its editorials in 1933 largely due to his efforts, and Harry was awarded his own Pulitzer for editorial writing in 1944.
Harry and Katharine decided to take a voyage to Italy and Greece in 1929 - they both shared a love of these classic cultures and languages, the result of their Oberlin education. But it never came off. Just before they were due to board the ship, Katharine came down with pneumonia and began to sink quickly. Lorin arrived from Dayton, then called Orville, told him to dig himself out of his funk and get on a train to Kansas City. Orville arrived on March 2, a day before Katharine died. Harry escorted Orville to Katharine's room and announced, "Here is Orv, Katharine. Do you recognize him?"