The Brighty Family in England

The Brighty Family came from the fen country in East Anglia. The earliest Brighty I’ve been able to pin down, more or less, is William Brighty, who died sometime around 1842, but as I haven’t done any research on him at all and really know nothing at all about him, I’ll start with his son, John Brighty.  Through preliminary research on the internet it seems that the Brighty family is large and complex and much remains to be done in sorting it all out.

John Brighty (1845-1931)

John Brighty was my great grandfather, however it is one of the branches of the family where the least information has been handed down over the years.   The Brightys came from the fen country in East Anglia, an interesting area of England, isolated by virtue of its geography and with its own very distinct cultural history.   The land is marshes and ditches, gradually drained over the years by a series of canals, and heavily agricultural with the production of grain crops.  For most of the population it was a pretty difficult life and the large part of them were labourers and small farmers.   The written record of these people is somewhat sparse, as you can imagine.

John Brighty was born in 1845 in Great Gidding, Huntingdonshire to John Brighty and Charlotte Smith.   His father, John Brighty senior, was a farmer and a corn factor, so slightly past the level of farm labourer, and his wife Charlotte Smith was also the daughter of another corn factor.   He died early at the age of 41, leaving Charlotte with two young children.   At this time he had a farm in Great Gidding, which his widow Charlotte (Smith) Brighty continued to farm for many years.

John Brighty’s first marriage to Hannah Hudson

In 1873 John Brighty junior married Hannah Maria Hudson in Oundle, Northamptonshire.  She was a farmer’s daughter from Benefield, about three miles from Oundle.  They lived in Oundle where John Brighty presumably carried on business as a corn factor.  They had four children rather rapidly, but unfortunately Hannah died during the birth of the last child, a girl called Nellie, who did not survive.  This happened right at the time of the 1881 census.

I haven’t sent for any of the original documentation however much can be deduced from the index entries. In the IGI (International Genealogical Index) there is a christening entry for Nellie Brighty, daughter of John and Charlotte Brighty on 27 March 1881 in Oundle. The birth date is not given.  A few days later on 3 April 1881 the census was taken and shows a complete family tableau.  The child Nellie is not alive on the night of the census.

The family was living at Herne Lodge, Ashton, near Oundle.   The head of the family was John Brighty with his wife Charlotte, and three of their four children.  The children at home were