Catharine Morris Wright was an artist, author, philanthropist, farmer, and guardian of nature. The only child of Harrison S. Morris, an early director of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and later president of the Art Association of Newport (now the Newport Art Museum), she was introduced to art and artists early in her life. In her teens, she attended the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, and she continued to paint most of her life. Her oil portrait of her father hangs in the Newport Art Museum.
Catherine first came to Jamestown before her first birthday and returned often, initially as a summer visitor at Horsehead, and later, after purchasing Fox Hill Farm in the late 1940s, as a resident. Her paintings often depicted scenes of Conanicut Island. To help protect the island she loved, she established restrictions on development of her land with the Nature Conservancy and gave part of Fox Hill Farm to the Audubon Society for a nature preserve. In the early 1930s, men working near Jamestown’s West Ferry unearthed some human bones and artifacts. To prevent looting of the graves, the town bought the land and asked Wright to take charge of the material recovered. She oversaw the securing of the archeological site and the collection of artifacts, which have since been returned to the Narragansett tribe.
Her poetry and essays appeared in magazines, including the Atlantic Monthly and the Saturday Evening Post. Her published books include two books of poetry, an autobiography, a collection of family reminiscences, and a biography of Mary Mapes Dodge. In the late 1970s, she worked closely with Shirley Tiexiera Quattromani to publish interviews with Jamestown residents of Portuguese heritage in History of the Portuguese of Conanicut Island, 1895–1980.
Biography and image provided by Rosemary Enright, Jamestown Historical Society
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