Isaiah Grant Wright

State Street divides Bristol between

Tennessee and Virginia (Ancestry.com).

We have talked a lot about Grant Tapscott [13 Jan 2016, 20 Dec 2015, 4 Dec 2015], but what became of Isaiah Grant Wright, Grant Tapscott’s possible father? According to Isaiah’s son, Ernest, Isaiah left Clark County around the time of Grant Tapscott’s birth, ending up in Bristol, a city split between Virginia and Tennessee, where he first worked as a teamster and then foreman at Dixie Tannery, and in later years as a laborer, plasterer, and lather.

Dixie Tannery, Bristol, Tennessee (TNGenWeb Project).

Did Isaiah leave home to avoid conflicts over Grant Tapscott’s illegitimate birth? Perhaps. Did he pick Bristol because of relatives there? We don’t know. But in Bristol he presumably met and certainly married (on 14 Mar 1894) Minerva Jane Dickerson, daughter of Craig (possibly “Craig Robert Campbell”) and Margaret (Massey) Dickerson.

Grant and Minerva went on to have thirteen children, the first of which, Joseph Bachman, was born 14 Sep 1893, several months before the marriage. Isaiah may have again(?) been sowing wild oats. The family may have done poorly on Grant’s income. On 30 Dec 1924, after living all his married life in Bristol (except for a brief return to Clark County, Illinois, between approximately 1904 and 1907), Grant died at age 61 of pellagra, typically a vitamin deficiency disease of the poor. He was interred under a crude marker in East Hill Cemetery, Bristol. Minerva died in Bristol several years later, on 3 Dec 1941, and was also buried in East Hill.