on the sound
natural
wealth
story by CATHERINE KOZAK • photographs by BROOKE MAYO
34 OUTER BANKS MAGAZINE
on the sound
Deep ancestral roots anchor the Wright family
to their farm along the Currituck Sound.
I
t’s been more than 150 years since Jacob Francis Wright shipwrecked
— so legend has it — off of Duck, right across the Currituck Sound
from where the Wright family eventually settled in Jarvisburg.
Sometimes Tommy Wright thinks about what his great-great
grandfather made of it all back then, when Caffey’s Inlet must have been
hopping with daring, motivated people looking for a bit of luck and hardearned fortune. He and his family have had a good dose of both in the century and a half since their ancestor shipwrecked here, but mostly they’ve
made adaptability a fine art.
The Wright family knows about transition; they’re in one right now —
one wrought by growth
and economic changes.
And they intend to roll
with it and keep their
250 acres of ancestral
land intact, yielding
crops, growing grapes
and making wine, welcoming visitors, protecting wildlife, offering
respite.
“It’s rewarding, but
sometimes it’s a heartache,” Tommy says. “Because you see changes.
I love the openness and
ruralness we have, but
part of progress . . .”
His words trail off.
Outside the front window of the Wright family’s winery, Sanctuary
Vineyards in Jarvisburg,
vehicles are heard whizzing past on U.S. 158.
“It’s one of the things you have to adjust to that’s not easy,” he says.
G
race Griggs, Tommy’s aunt, her manicured nails painted red,
her earlobes adorned with silver grapes, has the vibrancy and
mental nimbleness everyone wants to have when they’re 92.
“Everyone’s always asking me if I need help,” she says, walking at a solid pace toward her brick ranch homestead overlooking the
sound. “I don’t.”
Sitting with her nephew and great-nephew, she epitomizes the resilience of the three generations in the room. Her independent nature and
agile approach to circumstances are family traits with long roots and multiple shoots.
She’s got her own opinions about family tales, seeming to take Jacob
Wright’s origins with a grain of salt.
“Most everyone will tell you they were shipwrecked,” she says. “I don’t
believe it. They say it because they don’t know where they came from.”
Even for Currituck County, the state’s oldest, the Wright family — today
best known as proprietors of Sanctuary Vineyards and The Cotton Gin retail stores — is thick with history.
With the recent death of her 98-year-old sister, “Aunt Grace” Griggs
is the matriarch of the Wright family. By default — and by fortune of her
sharp intellect — she’s the walking Wright family encyclopedia.
Jacob Wright, she says, was a teacher and was believed to be a welleducated Englishman when he arrived on the Outer Banks sometime
before the 1850 census that recorded him in Duck. He was sent to Elizabeth City during the Civil War to build and repair light draft boats for the
Confederates.
His children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren stayed along
the sound in Currituck County, mostly hunting and fishing to make a living.
One of his three daughters later gave birth to
Washington Baum, who
was Dare County magistrate from 1928 to 1962
and who was the namesake for a bridge over
Roanoke Sound.
In 1914 Grace’s father, John Wright Sr., and
his brother started the
family legacy of farming
when they bought land
together and became
business partners in a
farming operation that
grew to one of the largest in the county. On
the side, John Sr. hunted
ducks and geese to sell
at markets in Norfolk.
The love of hunting
is deeply ingrained in
the Wright family. Hunting in the waterfowl-rich
Currituck Sound has been both livelihood and sport for generations. In
1945 John Sr.’s son, John Jr., was hired to manage Congressman Thurmond
Chatham’s Dews Island Club in the Currituck Sound. The Wright family
later purchased a partnership in the hunting lodge, which is located in the
sound behind their farm. They still use it for special occasions.
In 1956 John Jr. and his brother, Mark, established a farming operation
called Wright Brothers, Inc. and purchased a working cotton gin. In the late
1960s they transformed the gin into a general store named The Cotton Gin.
A produce market was on the north side, and the young boys of the family,
Tommy included, worked there when they weren’t in school.
It was a good life growing up, remembers Tommy, 57, who still lives on
the family property. He remembers spending weekends at a little camp
building and going out in boats with his father to look at birds or to hunt
and set trap lines for muskrats that they would sell for pelts. He recalls
some of the boys from Dare County fishing families calling the Wrights
“tater heads,” for being farmers.
Tommy’s brother, Jerry, remembers spending most of his time as a child
outdoors. As soon as he’d get off the school bus, he’d saddle up his Banker
pony and “go all over the community.” He helped his father farm and fish
Opposite: The back of the 250-acre Wright farm in Jarvisburg, along a creek that leads to the Currituck Sound.
Above: left to right, Tommy Wright, Jerry Wright and John Wright walking along a waterfowl impoundment on the property.
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on the sound
in the sound. In the fall he hunted ducks. After he secured his bachelor’s of cial wealth. They see it as natural wealth. That’s what I’m looking for. The
science from North Carolina State University, Jerry taught vocational edu- vineyard is not generating a lot of money right now. But I’m happy.”
cation for two years at J. P. Knapp High School.
Still, John says he has inherited the farmer mentality from his family.
“I did not like it one hoot,” he says.
“I have some of that farmer gene in me where
His love of the outdoors and working the land
something has to be done every day or I feel like evI have some of that
drew him back to the farm. In 1978 Jerry and Tommy
erything is going to go all Murphy’s Law,” he says.
took over the family farming enterprise. At age 62,
“Farmers are eternal optimists. That’s why we keep
farmer gene in me
Jerry still manages and farms the land. Including
doing this. But we’re pragmatic. Everybody’s happy
where something has
rented tracts, the Wrights farm about 1,400 acres of
to be alive but they’re always thinking ‘Now what?’
to be done every day
corn, soybeans, sorghum and wheat.
because there’s always a storm around the corner.
When he began farming, Jerry says, there were
It’s not just my family. It’s all farm families. My dad
or I feel like everything
23 farmers from Point Harbor to the Coinjock bridge.
and uncle have it too. But I’m still upbeat.”
is going to go all
Today, it’s down to five.
John credits a lot of his happiness to his wife.
Murphy’s Law.
“The type of farming that Wright Brothers does,”
“She pushes fun on a daily basis,” he says. “She balhe says, “probably won’t exist here in 20 to 25 years.”
ances me in a way.”
As the population of Currituck County has grown,
In the same way, John and the winery bring lightlarge farms have been chunked off and sold to developers.
heartedness to the farm. Wine tastings, live music, festivals, grape-stomping
“The tracts got smaller and smaller,” Jerry says.
parties and pig pickins are his ways of bringing fun to the business.
In 1970 the population of Currituck County was about 7,000. By 1990 it
“Dad and Uncle Jerry have gotten very businesslike in the farm lifehad doubled, to almost 14,000. In 2000 there were about 18,000 residents, style,” he says. “At first they didn’t want the live music, but now they come
and by 2012 the population was nearly 24,000.
around and hang out. That’s the kind of thing the farmers used to do in the
old days at the Jarvisburg gas station. They were working hard back then,
he Wrights emerged from the stampede of development with the but they still had some sort of diversion.”
family land intact. Rather than having to sell their land to survive,
they have adjusted the use of their property to the realities of
earing a camouflage cap and jeans tucked into knee-high
tourism.
rubber boots, Tommy drives his pickup truck down a dirt
For the past 35 years, Tommy, along with his wife, Candace, has been
road running along marshlands framed in loblolly pines. A
managing The Cotton Gin, a now greatly expanded retail store that’s a
shotgun lies between the seats.
popular stop for visitors on their way to and from the Outer Banks. The Jar“I’m not too much into killing anymore,” he says about hunting. “I think
visburg business was so successful that they opened three more locations, age kind of modifies your desire . . . but still, I’ve enjoyed some great days
in Nags Head, Duck and Corolla. They’re opening a cafe in the Jarvisburg duck hunting. My parents always encouraged me to hunt, but they said you
location this summer.
can’t be out there killing something for no reason.”
The Wrights planted grapes on the sandy, well-drained areas of their
He stops, grabs binoculars and trudges up a mound of dirt overlookfarmland in 2002. Today they have 15 acres of native, French and Italian ing some 25 acres of farmland that for about the past 30 years have been
grapes in the vineyards and plan to plant 2 more acres of grapes this year. intentionally flooded with fresh water in fall and winter to create a wildfowl
John Wright, Tommy’s son, is the vineyard manager and winemaker. impoundment. This area is only for looking. But hunting is allowed at other
John, 33, has a degree in economics from University of North Carolina at impoundments on the land.
Chapel Hill, followed with additional education in California to learn the
Over the ridge, hundreds of birds are gliding atop the shallow water.
wine business and four years as an apprentice at a vineyard.
Periodically, a flock rises, as if one huge creature, and flies in formation
With the thriving regional wine market, growing grapes and making toward the Currituck Sound.
wine seemed like a perfect fit for the farm. But more than adding another
Among the winter visitors are snow geese, blue and white herons, swan,
source of revenue, John loves making wine.
mallards, widgeons, shovelers, wood ducks, pintails, green wing teals, less“John has a passion for it,” Jerry says about his nephew, “and people er and greater scaup and hooded mergansers. Bald eagles patrol overhead.
who have a passion for what they do seem to do pretty good.”
The Wrights have always kept their love of open land and being on the
John says when he was young he didn’t think he’d come back to work water at the forefront. The family is working to get easements put on this
on the farm after college.
back part of the land to preserve it for wildlife.
“The way best to describe why I’m here is that growing up on a famAs a member of the state Wildlife Resources Commission and the state
ily farm breeds familiarity,” he says. “When I was in my teenage years, I Clean Water Management Trust Fund, Jerry says he has been involved in
took for granted what was so good about being here. I was of the modern conservation for a long time.
generation, more interested in TV, playing music in a garage band, surfing.
“One thing I’ve learned,” he says, “if you don’t have clean water, you
don’t
have wildlife or fish.”
When I got out of college, I realized.”
Conservation
is part of the brothers’ lineage of caring for the family
That’s why John says he chose farm life over finance.
“I made the decision to have fun as a career,” he says. “If I’d gone land.
through with the finance job, I would have had to wait until I got off work
“I guess I was just lucky enough to be born and live in an area with a lot
to have fun. I was drawn back because I thought it would be fun to start a of natural resources,” Tommy says, lowering his binoculars to admire the
vineyard. I knew it would be hard work, but I knew at least I wouldn’t regret pink-tinged clouds.
“The truth is, if you have roots, it seems to draw you back. I think what
trying it.
“I don’t believe that great financial gain is the means to happiness. my parents would be most proud of is that we’re still here. And we still care
That’s what connects me to my dad and uncle. They don’t see this as finan- about it.”
T
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Opposite: Vineyards, a retail store, a winery, farmland, gardens and four generations of family members keep this farm lively.
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