WRIGHT  : Vermilion Parish Towns & Cities, Louisiana
Submitted by Kathy LaCombe-Tell
Source: Jim Bradshaw; Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, 6/24/1997
Submitted August 2004

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WRIGHT 

In 1888, John B. Wright of Parke County, Indiana, bought land six miles 
east of the J. R. Gueydan Plantation in western Vermilion Parish, and 
it was upon this land that the community named for him sprang up. 

During the 1890's, John T. Gillentine became the first storekeeper and 
postmaster at Wright. Gillentine was manager of land owned by Will, 
Dick and Cal Garland, who were also from Parke Country and who had 
bought land there. They wanted the piece to be called Garland, but the 
postal authorities turned down the name because there was already a 
Garland, La., on their lists. 

A very early store was established in Wright by Henry Baker, and in 
1911 Hansford Hair and his son Millard established a general store 
which continued in operation until 1972. The Wright Post Office was 
closed in 1956. 

The Wright School, founded in 1895, was a one-room school built on the 
Dick Garland farm. 

In 1902 the Texas and New Orleans Railroad, a Southern Pacific 
subsidiary, completed its line through Wright from Kaplan to Gueydan. 
The railroad designated Wright as Hair Station, but the name Wright, 
used by the post office and later the school board, survived as the 
community's name.