Youth proves no obstacle for Paragould historian and author Erik J. Wright

Historian researches century-old murder case in book

By Avery Jones | Editor

Delta Digital News Service

April 14, 2023

PARAGOULD, Ark. – On March 25, local historian Erik J. Wright signed copies of his 2016 book, “Main Street Mayhem”, at Weber’s Book House in Paragould. The book investigates the 1909 murder case of local resident Charles Gragg and the 1911 disappearance of suspect James Trammell.

 Wright has been an independent historian for more than 15 years. He’s 38 and currently lives in Paragould with a wife and two children. He’s originally from Tucson, Arizona, and was raised in Texas. 

He studied in an archaeology program from Pima College in Tucson, but decided not to finish since he was already working in archaeology without the degree. 

“I thought I was too good for it,” Wright said. “At that time, archaeology, and I was doing it, and so I thought, what do I need college for?”

He worked with various organizations to conduct archaeological surveys and provide public education. At one point, he was a safety manager for a geophysical company. He worked in this field in Arizona until the 2008 recession killed the local industry.

In 2014, he moved to Paragould where he started working with the local newspaper. Now, along with his independent work as a historian, he’s the director for the Greene County Office of Emergency Management.

Wright became interested in writing on Paragould’s history after locals started to ask him about it. They knew he was a historian and wanted him to write about local history. He was skeptical at first, but after doing some research, he discovered what would become the topic of his book. 

“They kept bugging me about, well, why don’t you do something local?” Wright said. “And I thought, just, like what? And they kept pestering me and pestering me, and finally, I started digging into Paragould’s history…and that’s when I started finding a lot of the violent episodes, and that was kind of the genesis of that book.”

“They kept bugging me about, well, why don’t you do something local?” …they kept pestering me and pestering me, and finally, I started digging into Paragould’s history…and that’s when I started finding a lot of the violent episodes…”

– Erik J. Wright, author & historian

Wright first became interested in history as a child. His father read books about Western history, so that’s what Wright liked to read as well. He also had good history teachers. When he was a teenager, his parents took him to Tombstone, Arizona, where he met the town historian.

“I was encouraged by my parents to go talk to him,” Wright said. “He learned I was from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and he was like, if this is something you’re interested in, why don’t you go back and research some aspect of this story back in Dallas-Fort Worth?”

The historian told Wright that he should do some research on a story if he was interested. A year later, he published his first article in True West magazine about Doc Holliday and his history with Dallas, Texas.

He was 16 years old at the time and enjoyed the feeling of being published. He went on to say that his favorite part about being a historian is the research.

“Writing is a consequence of the research,” Wright said. “The research is fun…when you’re able to flesh out an event or a person that happened that people either have forgotten about or didn’t know about that adds to the contextual story of the Western movement, I think that’s a big deal.”

…“The research is fun…when you’re able to flesh out an event or a person that happened that people either have forgotten about or didn’t know about that adds to the contextual story of the Western movement, I think that’s a big deal.”

– Erik J. Wright, author & historian

He had good mentors at True West who taught him how to do research and that he has to take into consideration global factors and how they motivate people in past eras. According to Wright, a lot of researchers who write about history make the mistake of not taking into account the events that are driving people’s decisions.

“I was fortunate to have some very good mentors,” Wright said. “They took me under their wing and showed me the right sources and taught me that if you want to understand ‘X’, you also have to understand everything around it. So I spent a long time not just focusing on this over here, but globally, what was going on to motivate the people I was writing about.”

His mentors recommended books that were important to read, and Wright built an extensive library. In addition, at the time, someone had populated the Wyatt Earp research with false documents, so all of that had to be rewritten. Wright’s reputation was made on writing about Earp and the Apache Wars.

“I came into the field in an era when…there was a gentleman around that time roughly…who had populated a lot of the Earp stuff with false documents,” Wright said. “When I came into it, they had just realized that this had happened, and everything had to be basically rewritten.”

Due to his youth and inexperience, Wright faced some struggles that other historians usually don’t have to deal with. Most of his peers were much older than him.

“While I had a lot of good mentors…there were some people that saw me as…a 20-something-year-old kid that doesn’t know what he’s doing, and that was a challenge,” Wright said. “I never had any formal writing classes, so I’ve kind of had to be self-taught with everything.”

“While I had a lot of good mentors…there were some people that saw me as…a 20-something-year-old kid that doesn’t know what he’s doing, and that was a challenge,” Wright said. “I never had any formal writing classes, so I’ve kind of had to be self-taught with everything.”

– Erik J. Wright, author & historian

He was never interested in teaching history or going back to school to get his degree because he’d already found success without it. In addition, he’s more interested in independence than being restricted by the world of academia, and his interests are too varied for teaching.

Today, Wright is the assistant editor of the “Tombstone Epitaph” and a contributing editor for “True West”. He mostly writes book reviews, contacts publishers, interviews other historians, helps other historians with their research, along with doing his own research.

However, even though his work with these publications is nearly ideal for him, he doesn’t get as much time as he’d like to work on independent projects. Right now, he’s interested in violence and how justice was served on the Oregon and California trails, and also the Mountain Meadows Massacre. 

According to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, in September 1857, a branch of territorial militia in southern Utah composed entirely of Latter-day Saints, along with some American Indians they recruited, laid siege to a wagon train of emigrants traveling from Arkansas to California. The militiamen carried out a deliberate massacre, killing 120 men, women, and children in a valley known as Mountain Meadows. Only 17 small children—those believed to be too young to be able to tell what had happened there—were spared. This event is perhaps the most tragic episode in the history of the Church.

Wright said that in his research, one thing leads to another. He becomes interested in something because he’s researching something else, and he discovers another topic that connects to it. What he writes about might not have been his original area of interest, but something he found a lot of material about along the way.

“I could be researching the history of lemons, and then that leads me to the history of limes, which leads me to the history of oranges,” Wright said. “I’ve had numerous articles that have come out that have been just a chain reaction of looking into this guy, then, oh, I’ve got a lot on this guy, and now I’ve got a lot on this guy.”

His work as a historian can be frustrating when encountering misinformation about Western history in the media. According to Wright, most easily accessible sources, such as Wikipedia articles, are usually inaccurate. Views on the “Wild West” tend to be rather mythological.

However, Wright also said that forms of media like movies aren’t meant to be historically accurate. He believes that if it gets somebody interested enough in a historical event to go and do research of their own, that’s great. 

“If it gets some young kid out there interested in whatever historical event…and it makes him think and maybe go to the library and get a book on that subject, I think that’s fantastic,” Wright said.

“If it gets some young kid out there interested in whatever historical event…and it makes him think and maybe go to the library and get a book on that subject, I think that’s fantastic.”

– Erik J. Wright, author & historian

He said that there aren’t many people his age who are historians and interested in his area of expertise. When he goes to Western history conventions, most people there are much older than him. According to Wright, it’s vital that more young people get interested in history.

Wright believes that most people are bored by history because they had negligible history teachers in high school. He doesn’t want people to discredit history just because of this.

“You don’t have to just be crazy about history,” Wright said. “But if you can go and stand where something happened and have somebody credible explain that to you, I think that that’s a huge thing.”

---

Avery Jones is a sophomore in the Department of English and Philosophy at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro. She can be reached at [email protected]

---