The Orville Wright family tree, from Bishop Milton Wright to Katharine

Milton Wright was born in Rush County, Indiana, on 17 November 1828. He was ordained in the Church of the United Brethren in Christ in 1856 and made a bishop in 1877.¹ The Smithsonian gives his year of birth as 1829, and this chart follows the National Park Service and Wright State University, which give 1828.^11,14

Susan Catherine Koerner was born on 30 April 1831 in Loudoun County, Virginia. Her father, John Gottlieb Koerner, was a wagonmaker, and the family moved to Union County, Indiana, in 1832.³ Milton and Susan met in 1853 at Hartsville and married in Indiana on 24 November 1859.^1,2 The Smithsonian credits her with the mechanical skill she learned in her father’s carriage shop.¹¹

Milton’s church work moved the family twelve times before they settled in Dayton in 1884.¹² Susan had tuberculosis from about 1883 and died at home in Dayton on 4 July 1889.^4,12 Milton died at Hawthorn Hill in Oakwood on 3 April 1917.²

Five of the seven children grew up. Reuchlin, Lorin and Wilbur were born in Indiana. The National Park Service places Lorin’s birth at his grandparents’ home in Fairmount on one page and on a Fayette County farm on another.^7,2 The twins Otis and Ida were born in Dayton in 1870 and died in infancy.¹² Orville was born at 7 Hawthorn Street, Dayton, in 1871, and Katharine in the same house on his third birthday in 1874.^13,10

Reuchlin married Lulu Billheimer at Westerville, Ohio, in 1886. They had four children, three of whom lived, and from 1901 he farmed near Tonganoxie, Kansas.⁵ Wilbur left him 50,000 dollars in 1912.⁶

Lorin married Netta Stokes in 1892 and stayed in Dayton. He took the news of the first flight in December 1903 to the Dayton Journal and served as a city commissioner from 1920 to 1927.⁷ His children Milton, Ivonette, Leontine and Horace gave the family papers to Wright State University in 1975.¹⁴

The National Park Service states plainly that Wilbur never married and that Orville never married.^8,9 The reason usually given comes from Wilbur. PBS reports that he told reporters he did not have time for both a wife and an aeroplane. Orville turned the question aside by saying that Wilbur, as the elder, ought to marry first.¹⁵ No primary source for either remark was found.

Wilbur died of typhoid fever at 7 Hawthorn Street on 30 May 1912, aged 45.⁸ Orville died in Dayton on 30 January 1948.⁹ Both brothers, their parents and Katharine are buried in Woodland Cemetery, Dayton.^2,10

After her mother died, Katharine took on much of the running of the household. She graduated from Oberlin College in 1898 and taught Latin and English at Steele High School in Dayton until 1908.¹⁰ In January 1909 she sailed with Orville to France to join Wilbur, and at Pau she handled the business and social contacts of the brothers while Wilbur flew.¹⁶ In October 1914 she marched for women’s suffrage in Dayton with Orville and her father.¹¹

From 1914 she lived with Orville and Milton at Hawthorn Hill.⁹ On 20 November 1926, at Oberlin, she married Henry J. Haskell, a college friend who had become an owner and editor of The Kansas City Star.¹⁰ He was a widower, as his first wife, Isabella, had died in 1923.¹⁶

Orville refused to see the couple, who made their home in Kansas City, and shunned Katharine until days before her death.¹⁰ Katharine died of pneumonia in Kansas City on 3 March 1929. Orville reached her on 2 March, the day before she died.¹⁶ She was buried with her parents and her brother Wilbur in Woodland Cemetery.¹⁰

Two houses anchor the Orville Wright family tree. Orville and Katharine were born at 7 Hawthorn Street, Dayton, and Wilbur died there in 1912.^13,8 Henry Ford moved the house to Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan, in November 1936.¹³ The National Park Service spells the street Hawthorne, while The Henry Ford spells it Hawthorn.^10,13

Hawthorn Hill stands in Oakwood, south of Dayton. Orville, Katharine and Milton moved there in 1914, two years after Wilbur died, and Milton died there in 1917.^9,2 Today the house is kept by Dayton History.¹⁴

For earlier generations, the National Park Service publishes the ancestry of Milton Wright and of Susan Koerner Wright.^2,4