DeCourcy Wright Thom photograph collection

Ella Lea Wright (1837-1861) married Dr. Joseph Pembroke Thom (1828-1899) in 1857, and their son W. H. DeCourcy Wright Thom (1858-1932) was born the following year; a second son was born in 1861. As Ella Thom died when her sons were very young, the children were cared for by their mother's family, based in Queen Anne's County - her father, William Henry DeCourcy Wright and her sister, Clintonia Wright May (Thomas).

De Courcy Wright Thom was educated at private schools and graduated from the University of Virginia. In 1885, he married Mary Pleasants Gordon Thom (died 1892), daughter of Douglas H. Gordon, and the family's home was at 1208 North Charles Street in Baltimore City, where Thom worked as a banker and broker. Mary Thom died in 1892, leaving two children: Mary Gordon Thom and Anne Gordon Thom. After his wife's death, Decourcy Wright Thom retired from business and moved to Blakeford, the Wright family estate near Queenstown (Queen Anne's County). In retirement, Thom pursued varied interests - Maryland history and politics, historic preservation, philanthropy, and genealogy among them. He was an officer and active member of the Maryland Historical Society, and originated the society's magazine. Thom married Mary Washington Stewart in 1910, and they had two children together.

In the 1860s, a house at 14 East Franklin Street in Baltimore City became the home of Mary Thom's parents, Douglas Hamilton Gordon (1817-1883) and Anne Eliza Pleasants Gordon (1836-1901), having been built by John McKim twenty years earlier. The Gordon family came from Virginia, Anne Gordon being the granddaughter of a governor of that state. Shortly after Anne Gordon's death, the Franklin Street house was purchased from her estate to become the Margaret J. Bennett Home which opened in 1903 as a residence for young working women who were supporting families elsewhere and could not otherwise afford to live in the city.