Samuel Gardiner Wright was born on November 18, 1781, the great-great-grandson of Joshua Wright, one of three brothers who emigrated from Yorkshire, England, to the Burlington, New Jersey, area in 1677-1679. They were part of the larger movement of Quakers from the north of England to the Delaware Valley. Samuel's immediate line remained within the Society of Friends. His great-grandfather, John Wright, was the founder of Wrightstown, New Jersey. His father, Caleb, moved to the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania with a younger son, Joseph (1785-1855) and purchased a farm in Union Township, two miles above Shickshinny. Around 1811, Caleb returned to New Jersey, where he became a storekeeper at Juliustown. He was active in Quaker affairs, particularly the anti-slavery movement of the 1830s. Joseph remained in Pennsylvania, founding a separate line of the Wright family at Plymouth.

Samuel Wright married his distant cousin, Sarah G. Wright, in 1805, and through her came to possess a 300-acre farm at Cox's Corner in Upper Freehold Township. Monmouth County, a location later known as Wrightsville. The property had been purchased by Sarah's grandfather, David Wright, in 1770 and included a frame dwelling built by Robert Lawrence around 1735. Samuel demolished the newer frame dwelling built by David Wright and erected a handsome brick mansion in 1810 which he named Merino Hill. The name commemorated a flock of merino sheep which Wright imported in company with E. I. du Pont of Wilmington and other gentlemen farmers. Wright's flock had grown to about 200 by 1822, when he began selling them and devoting more time to other ventures. Besides breeding sheep and selling lambs and wool, Wright produced apples for distillation into cider and applejack, as well as other typical crops and livestock.

Around 1815, Wright began to diversify his operations. With several sets of partners. he engaged in two ventures to supply fuel to the newly-perfected steamboats operating in New York Harbor. The first, called the Arrarat Company, cut wood on Arrarat Creek near South Amboy under the supervision of James Applegate. The second, a partnership with C. and J. Foulks and others, operated near Toms River. Due to shortages of capital, bickering with partners, and the problem of supervising work at a distance, neither of these companies lasted more than three years, and the Arrarat Company ended in litiga-tion. Wright also invested in unsuccessful attempts by David Thacker to establish salt works at Tuckerton. New Jersey, and Lewes, Delaware.

By 1817, Wright had established himself as a general merchant in Philadelphia, initially in partnership with David Cooke. Initially dealing in New Jersey agricultural products, he was soon trading along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. From 1820 to 1822, he conducted a trade with David Brearley, then Indian Agent at Dardanelle, Arkansas Territory, exchanging eastern manufactures for furs.

Around 1820, Wright decided to expand into the iron trade. He agreed to supply David C. Wood's Millville Furnace with ore and market its output. In 1822, he took a full one-year lease of Millville Furnace and also acquired from William D. Waples a lease on the Delaware Furnace near Millsboro in southern Delaware, placing Derrick Barnard in charge. At the same time, he purchased the rights to bog ore beds along the Nanticoke River that had formerly belonged to the Deep Creek and Pine Grove Furnaces. Ore from the Delaware beds was shipped across Delaware Bay to Millville and other furnaces in southern New Jersey. Wright purchased another ore bed on the Ivanhoe Branch of Crosswicks Creek near Prospertown in 1824. About this time, he bought a fractional interest in the East Jersey Proprietorship, which entitled him to a share of unseated lands. He began to assemble enormous land holdings in a broad swath between Imlaystown and Toms River. The core of these holdings was a tract of 26,000 acres around present-day Lakehurst, which included the derelict Federal Furnace and Forge. Wright restored Federal Furnace and renamed it Dover Furnace in 1826. Wright apparently operated the associated Phoenix Forge for a short time but possibly lost it in a title dispute. He also briefly held a partial interest with Samuel J. Read in the nearby unrelated Dover Forge.

Charcoal was manufactured at Dover Furnace and (until 1830) on the nearby Greenwood Forest Tract through rights leased from the Newbold family. As bog ore deposits in South Jersey became exhausted, Wright helped found the Mt. Hope Mining Company in Morris County in 1831. Wright remained an important ironmaster for seven years. He manufactured pig iron, stoves, wagon-wheel boxes, sash boxes, and large quantities of pipe for the new urban gas and water systems throughout the Northeast. He appears to have made or tried to make strap rail and castings for some of the earliest United States railroads. Wright appears to have had a close relationship with architect John Haviland, providing iron architectural elements for the fence around Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and doors and fittings for several of his famous prisons. Delaware Furnace turned out the majority of Wright's stoves and also specialized in the manufacture of cast iron plowshares.

Wright was also heavily involved in real-estate speculation outside New Jersey. Through his father and brother Joseph, he inherited land in the Wyoming Valley at Plymouth and Pittston, much of it containing coal deposits. During the period from 1810 through 1820. Wright owned land at Milford, Otsego County, New York, and lots in Philadelphia. Beginning in the 1830s, he acquired lots in New York City and joined in the rush to speculate in western lands. Wright's purchases were in the central part of Illinois and also near Quincy, and were undertaken in conjunction with a number of friends and associates from the Trenton area under the name of the Trenton Illinois Company. Wright also made land purchases in Missouri. He made numerous trips along the Ohio-Mississippi Valley, both attending to his mercantile business and looking after his real estate.

Wright was a local leader of the Adams faction of the Democratic-Republican and Whig parties in the realignments of the 1830s. He was elected to a term in the Legislative Council (State Senate) in 1830-1831.

Wright began to withdraw from some of his enterprises in the early 1830s. He sent his eldest son Gardiner Harrison Wright (1806-1886) to take charge of Delaware Furnace in 1832. After 1832, the American iron industry suffered from the destabilizing effects of the Bank War and from reduced tariffs on imported iron. Wright sold the Dover Furnace property to another ironmaster, Benjamin B. Howell, in 1833 but retained a mortgage to secure the purchase price. Howell sold the property to his two sons, and they in turn sold it in 1836 to a group of New York land speculators, the Monmouth Purchase Company. The Panic of 1837 and its aftermath delayed the settlement with Wright and led to very strained relations with both Howell and the Monmouth Purchase Company. Wright's mortgage was not paid off until 1840.

The financial convulsions of 1837-1843 played havoc with Wright's other ventures as well. Delaware Furnace shut down in 1834, reopened briefly in 1836, and closed for good in 1837. Dover Furnace also shut down around 1837, as did Wright's Philadelphia store. Wright no doubt suffered from the collapse of western land values after 1839. Wright apparently spent these years at Merino Hill trying to salvage his western investments. He also engaged in the importation of Missouri mules. Wright took part in the political campaign of 1840, and in 1844 he was elected to the House of Representatives. Wright died of dropsy on July 30, 1845, before he could take his seat.

Wright's career provides an excellent example of the American businessman just before the transition from "merchant capitalism" to "industrial capitalism." While they were important in their own day, none of his enterprises left direct successors, and the trades and techniques they represented were rendered obsolete soon after his death. Although not ranked among the "great" Philadelphia merchants, Wright was part of that much larger second tier whose activities produced the first stages of industrialization in the United States.

Wright's widow survived him for another forty years. Gardiner H. Wright remained at Millsboro, Delaware. In 1834, he had married Cassandra, the daughter of Colonel William D. Waples. After the abandonment of Delaware Furnace, he continued to operate the foundry and remelting or cupola furnace adjoining it, manufacturing plows and other iron implements. This operation lasted until 1879. The family moved to Georgetown, Delaware, around 1862 where Gardiner became President of the Georgetown branch of the Farmers State Bank. He was also deeply involved in local politics and served as State Treasurer in the 1850s. The second son, Harrison Gardiner Wright (1810-1885) inherited Merino Hill and passed it on to his descendants. The third son, Samuel G. Wright, Jr. (1819-1897) had apparently caused his father some difficulties in his youth, running away to join the Navy. The elder Wright was obliged to use his connections to have him released from the service. Samuel, Jr., returned to New Jersey and, like his father, became a commercial farmer. While subsequent generations achieved some status in the learned professions (Harrison's grandson, Walter Livingston Wright, Jr., was President of Lincoln University), none equalled Samuel G. Wright's status in the business community.