John Wright (businessman)

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John Wright was an emigrant English pioneer, colonial period businessman who established Wright's Ferry (and eventually the town eponymously named for it). The resulting increase in settlement triggered nine years of armed conflict during the Maryland-Pennsylvania boundary dispute known as Cresap's War. The animal powered ferry was the very first means of crossing the broad unfriendly Susquehanna River in a region known as Conejohela Valley nearly halfway between what became Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and York County, Pennsylvania.

Wright was a Quaker who first came to the area in 1724 to explore the land and preach to the local Native Americans. In 1730, he was granted a patent to operate a ferry across the river and subsequently established the ferry with Robert Barber and Samuel Blunston. He also built a ferry house and a tavern on the eastern shore of the Susquehanna, north of Locust Street, on Front Street in Wright's Ferry, as the town was then known. The two-story log tavern, operated by John Wright, Jr. until 1834, consisted of a large room on either end connected by a passageway. When John Jr. married, he moved to York County’s western shore at Wright's Ferry West (later to be named Wrightsville), and built another ferry house and tavern. The ferry itself consisted of two dugout canoes fastened together with carriage and wagon wheels. When numerous cattle were moved, the canoeist guided a lead animal with a rope so that the others would follow. If the lead animal became confused and started swimming in circles, however, the other animals followed until they tired and eventually drowned.