Thomas D. Wright, of Binghampton, is no more. He died suddenly on the 7th inst., from an affection of the heart, in the thirty-fourth year of his age. The deceased was born in Kilvermoon Parish, County Tipperary, Ireland, on the 27th of November, 1830, and there received a finished education, closing with the Dublin University, of which he was a graduate. We believe, too, that he commenced a course of legal study in an office in London. Though a mere youth, his ardent impulsive nature and love of liberty caused him to take part in the Smith O'Brien rebellion of 1848, upon failure of which he embarked, as did most of the leaders, for the United States, to seek asylum from the pursuit of the British Government. Through the influence of friends there, he was offered a full pardon if he chose to return, but he spurned the proposal, and determined to live and die an American. On his arrival here he was a slender boy, friendless, penniless and alone, in a land of strangers. For a season he taught an obscure common school in the vicinity of Port Jervis, and afterward had charge of a corps of laborers on the erie railway as clerk or foreman, and while thus employed in the vicinty of this place, he casually made the acquaintance of the Rev. Dr. Andrews, then rector of Christ Church, Binghampton. The Doctor soon discovered in the young stranger under the rough garb of the railroad assistant, a fine scholarly taste and rare classic attainments, as well as genial social qualities, and atonce introduced him into society, and to the law office of Dickinson & Tompkins, where he soon entered as a student. Upon Mr. Dickinson's return to his profession at the expiration of his term as Senator in Congress in 1851, amongst a number of young men in the office, the subject of his notice attracted his special attention as one of peculiar mark and promise. Mr. Wright was admitted to practice at the January term of the Supreme Court in 1852, and in February following Mr. Dickinson, in making permanent professional arrangements, associated him as general copartner. The office conducted a heavy and responsible business, in which Mr. Wright bore a conspicuous part, under this relation, which continued until July last, over twelve years, without the utterance of an unkind or ungenerous word between them. In 1858 Mr. Wright united in marriage with Helen Stuyvesant, daughter of Hon. John A. Collier. He loeaves her a widow with three young and interesting children to mourn their irreparable loss - this too early and painful bereavement. He was no ordinary man. A gentleman of large and varied experience in life declares he never knew one, young or mature, native or foreign, his equal in intuitive perception. He read men and motives and motives at a glance, and grased and analyzed subjects with the raidity of light. In the domestic relations he was kind and affectionate.

His spirit was generous and buoyant - his social qualities and powers of conversation remarkable, his wit ready and sparkling, his imagination vivid, and his logic chaste and compact. These faculties gave him a professional strength uncommon for his age - an eminence which few attain after years of patient research and extended study.

As an active and honorable member of the legal profession, a citizen of enterprise and culture, and as a friend and neighbor, his loss will be felt and deplored; but the shadow that darkens the hearth at the deserted fireside is greater than them all.

His funeral, one of the most numerous ever witnessed in Binghampton, was from his late residence, under the solemn and imposing services of the Episcopal Church, of which he was a communicant, conducted by Rev. Platt, Rector, assisted by the early friend of the deceased, Rev. Dr. Andrews, and Chaplain Lewis, of the United States Navy. Rev. Fathers O'Riley, Hourigan and Sweeny, of the Catholic Church, were present, as were also, in addition to a general attendance by our citizens, hundreds of his countrymen, with tasteful badges of nationality, as a mournful tribute of respect to the memory of their admired and beloved brother. His remains repose in Spring Forest, where a dear child has preceded him.

Source: NY Times, Saturday, Nov 26, 1864

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