Flourished: 1850 to 1865 District of Columbia

Joseph L. Wright, government officeholder, was nominated for doorkeeper of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1850, but his name was withdrawn from consideration for the office when he failed to secure enough votes. In 1853 and 1855 he served as a messenger in the House of Representatives. Wright was elected in May of 1858 to fill the office of doorkeeper to the House of Representatives through the end of the Thirty-Fifth Congress. He was re-nominated to the post the following session of Congress in 1860, but lost the election. Wright served as a messenger in the U.S. Senate in 1862 and at the capitol in 1864. The following year he was a clerk at the capitol. Wright was involved in 1859 in the organization of the Washington Base Ball Club, as well as the club’s baseball team, the Washington Nationals. Politically, Wright was a Democrat.

U.S. House Journal. 1850. 31st Cong., 1st sess., 328, 354; Register of Officers and Agents, Civil, Military, and Naval, in the Service of the United States, on the Thirtieth September, 1853 (Washington, DC: Robert Armstrong, 1853), 303; Register of Officers and Agents, Civil, Military, and Naval, in the Service of the United States, on the Thirtieth September, 1855 (Washington, DC: A. O. P. Nicholson, 1855), 193; U.S. House Journal. 1858. 35th Cong., 1st sess., 842-43; U.S. House Journal. 1860. 36th Cong., 1st sess., 187-89; New-York Daily Tribune (NY), 19 May 1858, 4:2; Monmouth Democrat (Freehold, NJ), 20 May 1858, 2:3; Thomas Hutchinson, comp., Boyd’s Washington and Georgetown Directory (Washington, DC: Thomas Hutchinson, 1862), 184; Andrew Boyd, comp., Boyd’s Washington and Georgetown Directory (Washington, DC: Hudson Taylor, 1864), 282; Andrew Boyd, comp., Boyd’s Washington and Georgetown Directory (Washington, DC: Hudson Taylor, 1865), 371; Frank Ceresi and Carol McMains, “The Washington Nationals and the Development of America’s Pastime,” Washington History 15 (Spring/Summer 2003), 27, 29.