Mary Jane Neeley Wright was born October 8, 1833, in Vermilion County, Illinois, the daughter of Lewis and Elizabeth Miller Neeley, who were converts to the Mormon Church in its early history. They suffered the persecutions of the Saints by different mobs until they arrived in Nauvoo, Illinois. Mary Jane's parents received their endowments in the Nauvoo Temple on February 6, 1846, and their patriarchal blessings under the hands of Patriarch John Smith January 19, 1846. He addressed Elizabeth as "Betsy, beloved of the Lord."

Among Mary Jane's earliest recollections was the memory of the Prophet Joseph Smith, whom she knew and saw many times. She was eleven years old when he was martyred; she never forgot the scene of sorrow that shook the beautiful city of Nauvoo when Joseph and Hyrum were brought home. She could relate many experiences of those days of trial and suffering. They crossed the frozen Mississippi River with the exodus of the Saints in February, 1846. At Kanesville, Pottawattomie County, Iowa, her mother, Elizabeth Miller Neeley, gave birth to a baby girl on January 25, 1847, and died eight days later from exposure.

Lewis Neeley was an active church worker. He was first counselor to Joseph L. Clark, president of the elders at Miller's Hollow, Iowa, and helped to build homes for the hundreds of Saints who had been driven out of Nauvoo and other sections of Illinois and Missouri. At this time Mr. Neeley married Sophia Parsons Ketchem, a widow with four children of her own. They were married at Council Bluffs, Iowa, on June 27, 1847. Mary Jane was fourteen years old.

In the spring of 1850 they joined an organized company traveling westward to Utah. Mary Jane had many trials as well as many interesting experiences while making the toilsome journey across the plains. She was a happy, vivacious and sociable girl of seventeen; everyone knew and loved her and remembered her for her thoughtfulness, consideration and the tender love she gave her little eleven year old sister Harriet, and her three brothers, William, Lewis and Armenius. They traveled eight to twenty miles a day, often walking the whole way.

They arrived in Utah in the fall of 1850, and lived for awhile in their wagons and tent until their adobe house was built. Her father bought a half acre of ground at Ninth East and Sixth South, and a few months later her father and his sons built another adobe house on this property which was larger and more comfortable for the family.

When Mary Jane was 19 years of age, she married Jonathan Calkins Wright February 25, 1852, in the office of President Brigham Young. She often said, "I did not marry Mr. Wright for love, but to help him rear four motherless children, Amos, David, Charlotte and Jonathan, and to get my little sister Harriet(Neeley Strong) away.... I had not been married to him many weeks before I respected and loved him. He was so kind to me, to his own children and to my little sister."

With the family she lived in Cottonwood and Jonathan was sustained first bishop of the ward. Their child Peter, was born and died within a few hours. In 1854 they were called with fifty other families to help settle Brigham City. The Wrights lived in the Old Fort and Jonathan assisted in building the first two houses erected in Brigham City. Mary Jane dug sego lily bulbs for food during their first winter, and endured many privations. Some of the families who journeyed with Jonathan C. Wright and his wife Mary Jane, were those of Lorenzo Snow, John Reese, James Pert and Porter Squires. These families remained close friends for many years, were humble and believed and lived the teachings of the Gospel.

Mrs. Wright was one of the eight original teachers chosen in the Relief Society when it was organized in Brigham City on May 12, 1869. In 1874 she became a counselor to President Harriet Snow and in 1890 was selected as a counselor to Olivia Widerborg in the Relief Society Stake Presidency, and occupied that position until 1898.

One day while starting on an errand of mercy to one of her neighbors, she was about to place her foot on the step of the cart when the horse jerked the cart, throwing her to the ground and breaking her left wrist and hip, resulting in her death on July 20, 1909, in Brigham City, Box Elder County, Utah.