True Story: My Family’s Revenant

When I was growing up, my sister and I would beg our parents to tell us “True Stories.” We loved hearing stories that happened to people we knew, especially when they were funny or scary. With the popularity of The Revenant (which by the way is incredible), one of these True Stories sticks out in my mind. I know that this post is an aberration from my usual topics, but this story is too cool not to share. My family has its own version of Hugh Glass. 

Abner Ellis Wright, M.D. is my great, great, great-grandfather’s brother on my dad’s side. He was born in 1816 in New York. He trained as a doctor and eventually ended up in Iowa. He was described by his great-nephew as a man of short, thick stature with shoulder-length brown hair and a long beard. In 1849, he decided to join the throngs of people heading west to seek their fortune during the California gold rush. During the first part of the journey up the Platte River, he experienced attacks by the Native Americans, crippling cold, and dangerous river crossings. When they reached Salt Lake City, he heard Brigham Young speaking in the street. He and his crew eventually made it to California after more than four months and countless battles with the Native Americans. While in California, he experienced something in March 1850 that would change his life forever. A fellow miner had been attacked by a grizzly bear, and Doc joined the party to hunt the bear down. The following is in Doc’s own words, published in the Portrait and Biological Record of the State of Colorado, 1899:

I found him first at the head of Shirt-Tail Canon. When I first sighted the bear he was about sixty yards distant lying in a pine thicket. Upon my approach, he arose, uttering a hoarse growl of warning. He looked as big as an elephant and it made things kind of creep down my back as he smashed his teeth together. As he raised up I drew a bead on him and sent a slug through his body just behind his front legs, but quartering, so that the slug, as it was afterward found, came out the point of his shoulder. The bear did not show fight but plunged deeper into the chaparral. I pursued him, and while struggling with the bear, the rest of the party came up and began firing at the animal. This was unfortunate for me, for not a shot hit the bear, but four clipped me, one shot going through the base of my right thumb. Worse still, one of the men, carried away by excitement, rushed up as I fell to the ground and fired so close to me that the ball went through my powder horn, which was slung over my shoulder with a pound of powder in it, the ball going into my right arm. Thus I was blown up, torn up, and shot all at once… This was not a draw game. The bear got my scalp and I never got the belt.

Another interview with Doc, quoted in his 1907 obituary in the Colorado Republican, states:

…He grabbed me and shook me like a puppy would a rag. I lost my gun and the belt in which I carried my pistol was broken. The stroke of one of the bear’s claws lacerated my breast, my left breast and shoulder was between his massive jaws. I got out the big knife and jammed it into the brute repeatedly. I cut his heart and we both fell. As the last dying effort, the bear let go his hold on my shoulder, and seized the left side of my head, tearing away my scalp, crushing my skull, and tearing away my left ear. I estimated the bear weighed 1,600 pounds.

His comrades bound a piece of pine bark to his wounds and rushed him to a doctor. It took him five months to regain the strength to walk, and two years before he called himself well. He said, “Some perhaps think that the bear got away with part of my brains, but when it comes to business I think I am about as clear headed as my neighbors, and my professional success goes to prove that I never lost all my brains anyway.” He carried around a jar holding his ear, rib, and piece of skull, but accidentally left it on a whaling boat (what didn’t he do?). Rumor has it the jar is in a medical museum in Boston. One of his relatives says she remembers in 1852 that his chest wound hadn’t healed yet, and he wore a leather strap around his torso to protect it. She claims she could see his heart and collapsed lung through the hole. I’m not totally sure I believe that, but it’s recorded in two different places!

This man had the most amazing life. Other than surviving a grizzly bear attack, he was a pioneer, a miller, a store owner, a whaler, a miner, a soldier, and a coroner, all while still practicing medicine here and there. He even founded the town of St. Elmo, Colorado. Oh, and he was run over by a train in Utah. Even after all that, he went on to get married, have kids, and die at 91 years old. That, my friends, is a true badass.