One branch of candidate's family tree you won't see
McCain's grandfather was well-known in Muskogee.
John McCain's grandfather was well-known in Muskogee

By Tony Thornton

Published: August 31, 2008

MUSKOGEE — The John McCain biographies are replete with information about his paternal grandfather, a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy.

His maternal grandfather, Archibald Wright? Not so much.

Nancy Calhoun thinks she knows why.

"This is one skeleton that the McCains probably wish would stay in the closet,” said Calhoun, who is director of genealogy and local history at the Muskogee Public Library.

Wright spent more than two decades in Muskogee. His twin daughters, including McCain's mother, Roberta Wright McCain, grew up in a three-story home that still stands at 1027 W Martin Luther King (then known as Fon-du-Lac).

Even in a town filled with colorful characters, Wright stood out.

He was, at various times, a bootlegger, oil wildcatter and operator of a gambling house. His antics frequently landed him in jail, but Wright never seemed to lack bail money.

After a grand jury indicted him on 128 bootlegging counts in 1910, Wright paid a $12,750 cash bond, The Oklahoman reported. That amount would be worth more than $280,000 today.

"If Wright is a bootlegger, he evidently has made a lot of money in the business,” the newspaper quipped.

A year later, Wright bought a downtown hardware store for $135,000 (worth more than $3 million in today's dollars), with plans to remodel it.

Wright sold the building in 1915 for $5,000 less than he'd paid, according to records in the county clerk's office.

"It is such a lovely town,” Roberta Wright McCain told the newspaper.

She specifically recalled a park on the city's east side, which featured a "beautiful bridge and a small lake.” She also spoke of learning about the Five Civilized Tribes at Franklin School.

The candidate's mother said she had been through Muskogee twice since then and looked at her childhood home. The second time, about 25 years ago, she knocked and asked to peek inside, recalled the home's current owner, Priscilla Jackson.

"She just wanted to see it. She said she'd had just a wonderful time here,” Jackson said.

Subsequent directories show no occupation for him. That tends to validate a claim made in Robert Timberg's book, "John McCain: An American Odyssey,” that Wright "made his fortune, and retired by 40.”

He moved his family to Los Angeles when his twin daughters were about 14. Wright died there in 1975.

Another McCain biography, "Man of the People” by Paul Alexander, describes Wright as a "rich and strong-willed oilcatter” who retired to California "so he could spend all of his time with his daughters.”

The biographies don't mention the less favorable headlines Wright earned while living in Oklahoma.

"Lots of Booze,” screams a 1909 headline.

The accompanying one-paragraph story told of $500 in illegal liquor being seized from two homes, including Wright's, and a drug store.

"Big Bunch of Gams Pinched,” reads a 1908 headline concerning a gambling raid at Wright's house. The raid was effective, the story states, because the buzzer intended to alert gamblers failed to work.

A 1908 story refers to Wright as "proprietor of the gambling resort over Mistletoe bar on North Main Street.” That story describes a "legal” card game won by Wright over two sheriff's deputies, which allowed him to keep $1,000 in bail money put up to guarantee court appearances for 41 gamblers arrested at his establishment.

"Evidently, he was well known around town,” said Calhoun, the local historian. "He had his fingers in a lot of pies.”

A state Corrections Department spokesman said there are no records indicating Wright ever served time in prison.

"This is the most important piece of news you ever printed in your newspaper,” the Muskogee Phoenix quoted Wright as saying in a Feb. 8, 1912, article. Wright apparently had called the paper to report the twins' birth.

That appears to have been a life-changing event for Wright. Local newspapers show no further arrests after his daughters' birth.

At statehood, Muskogee was rich with oil money and a favorite spot for "investors” seeking to steal land from Cherokee and Creek allottees.

It also featured European settlers and a large Jewish population, said Sue Tolbert, director of Muskogee's Three Rivers Museum.

"It was a pretty rough town,” Tolbert said.

"It reminds me of the stories of the carpetbaggers after the Civil War.”

Tolbert began researching Wright after a local teacher told her that McCain's mother grew up in Muskogee.

Her assessment?

"My first impression was that he was probably quite a scoundrel, but in looking further and thinking about it, he was doing what a lot of other people were doing.”

"Muskogee was a rough and tumble town at that time. So he really wasn't any different than anybody else,” Tolbert said.

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