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Thirteen years after Josiah’s death, John Tennent Wright Jr. and his second wife, Terilla, purchased the House from Helen Stanford. John Wright was a sea captain in the days when masted and steam ships carried freight in and out of San Francisco Bay.
John Wright Jr. was born in New York on Christmas Eve, 1826. He took to the sea early and often accompanied his sea-captain father on voyages up and down the East Coast. Both John Wrights sailed to California during the Gold Rush, although on different ships and different routes. Wright Jr. arrived in San Francisco in April of 1849. Almost immediately, he purchased the outfit of a man returning from the gold fields. Within six months he cleared $15,000 panning on the American River. He returned to San Francisco and purchased the bark Clarissa and more than paid for the boat with his first load of passengers bound for Panama. On the return trip the boat was lost, although most passengers were saved.
About 1861 John Wright Jr. began captaining after the Wrights began building their own boats. Soon the Wrights’ (father and two sons) had established a struggling steamship business. Because of a glut of ships on the West Coast, the Wright Line spread out along the coast from Peru to the British Columbia.
During the steamship days Wright Jr. lived in San Francisco with his wife, Susan. They had a son George. The family was living at the Cosmopolitan Hotel when Mrs. Wright died in March of 1877. A year later John married Terilla Beck. They moved across the bay to Wright’s property in Oakland. John and Terilla lived at the southeast corner of Fifth and West Streets. Their son George, lived next with his wife Emily, and daughter, Catherine. John was listed in city directories as an agent for the steamship William Taber. In September of 1903 Wrights purchased the lakeside property now know as the Camron-Stanford House. After living in it for four years, sold it to the City of Oakland in October of 1907. Three years later the Victorian structure opened to the public as the Oakland Public Museum.
John T. Wright died in Oakland in 1911. He is buried at Mountain View Cemetery in the family plot with his first wife and son.
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