James Mann Wright was born in Kansas, USA, in 1870, and was a medical missionary with the Reformed Presbyterian Mission in South China in the early 20th century.
He attended Kansas State Agricultural College in Manhattan for one year, then had four years at Kansas Medical College in Topeka.
In 1902 Dr. Wright was married to Nancy Belle Greenlee of Idana, Kansas. They accepted an appointment to the RPCNA South China mission, arriving at Tak Hing in October, 1902, in company with Rev. and Mrs. John K. Robb, also newly appointed.
Dr. Wright began helping in the clinics. He was an outstanding surgeon, and soon his successes in surgery for cataract were hailed by the Chinese as little short of miraculous.
In 1905 when the girls' school in Tak Hing was ready to open, Nancy Wright volunteered to take charge of it. She was an omnivorous reader and was very well-informed on many subjects, and had taught in Idama, Kansas, prior to her marriage. She was a fine teacher, a splendid organizer, and she directed the girls' school for several years, refusing pay other than her husband's regular salary.
Dr Wright was one of eight original members from China chosen by the American College of Surgeons to be charter members of the China branch of that organization. His special training in bacteriology made him a valued consultant to the Hong Kong Bacteriological Laboratory, and he was credited as the first one to identify a case of blastomycosis in China.
Like other missionaries, Dr Wright owned a holiday property on Cheung Chau, which is marked, not very accurately, as House 2 in the Mission photo of 1911. The villa is at the top of Fa Peng in the area of House 7 or 8.
Dr. Wright with his wife and son Paul returned to the USA in 1928 and he took up private practice in his home town of Denison, Kansas. For two years he was president of Jackson County Medical Association.
He died in February, 1933, aged 63. Nancy died in 1935 in Topeka, Kansas.
Source: Reformed Presbyterian Mission in South China.
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