The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1912-06-15
Miss Sophie B. Wright.

June 10, 1912, at her residence in this
city, struck deep into the hearts of
thousands in and out of New Orleans,
for she had been to all the truest of
friends and to many little less than a
guardian angel
New Orleans has been famous for
many distinguished women benefactors.
They have endowed colleges, they have
built libraries, they have made large
requests to great hospitals for the
special benefit of women and children
and their names are most deservedly
embIazoned on the magnificent struc-
lures which they have built, or which
they have endowed, but their good
works and noble deeds in no respect
transcend those of Sophie Wright.
Born to low estate, if not to poverty,
an almost helpless cripple from her
early childhood, she grew up knowing
nothing of the joys of health and vigor,
and compelled to earn livelihood from
her youth up, but her frail and delicate
body was the repository of noble soul
and wonderful mind. Kept in the
house by her physical infirmities, she
devoured all learning until she was an
encyclopedia of knowledge, and she
early became a teacher of wonderful
| power to impart instruction and with
a magical influence for good over her
pupils.
| In time her school, the Home Insti-
tute for Girls, became famous, not
only as dispenser of instruction to
her female pupils, but in developing
all the better elements of their natures,
so that many of the young women
whom she sent out to the serious bust
ness of life became polished corner
stones in the social edifce.
| Although she was forced to teach
for livelihood. the keynote of her ma
ture was charity, and she gave and
spent herself for the good of others
more than she had bodily strength to
do, sustained by her loving heart and
noble soul, asking no other reward than
the fact of the benefits she conferred.
Realizing that many boys and youths
were forced by the necessities of their
condition to work in the daytime, with
no opportunity to attend the public
schools, and regarding them with in
tense pity, she opened free night
school and taught them for ten years,
until the city itself opened night schools.
Miss Wright founded the New Or
leans Home for Incurables, where aged
dependent persons suffering from dis
eases for which there was no cure, but
which were amenable to some relief
from pain, might have their agonies in
some degree assuaged and where they
can have rest and fair degree of COM
fort. 1t is still an important institu-
ton, supported chiefly by private
charity. She was prominent member
Of the benevolent order of Kings
Daughters and was largely instrument
al in establishing 'Rest Awhile" an
asylum in the balmy pine woods of St.
Tammany, where during the summer
season great numbers of working wo-
men and their children are freely en-
tertained in turn in the delightful
shady groves and sunny Fairgrounds.
To serve the needy and helpless was
the delight of her life and the profound
and widespread influence her generous
heart and giving hands wrought in the
community made this frail and physi-
cally almost helpless woman an object
of well-nigh universal love and interest.
She was made the recipient of many
testimonials of the love and respect of
the citizens of New Orleans, and on
one occasion she was presented with
check to pay mortgage Of $4,000
which she had placed on her home and
school in order to carry out some of
her beneficient undertakings. The last
expression of the general love and af-
lection in which she was held in this
city was the naming by the mayor and
city council for her of a magnificent
building in the public school system.
But her work of devoted charity
came to an end because her frail body
could no longer sustain the demands
made upon it by her loving heart and
noble soul, and she has gone to her re-
ward. But long will her fragrant
memory live in the hearts of the peo-
pie of New Orleans. She hath done
what she could, and no one has done
more. : Picayune, June IL.