Henry Bright of Bristol

Bristol merchant and slave-trader, active in Jamaica in the 1740s. He has an entry in the ODNB that details his slavery-related activities in Britain and Jamaica, and shows him with his brother Francis as mortgagee of the Cabaritta estate in Westmoreland.

In 1760, Jeremiah Meyler and Charles Hall acquired the Jacobsfield estate, a property of of 1,050 acres, from Sarah Allin, widow of Jacob Allin. It was presumably after owner Jacob Allin of St Andrew parish. Richard Meyler [Senior] of Bristol reluctantly provided financial assistance with this purchase. In 1761, the estate's name was changed to Cabaritta after a local river near Savanna-la-Mar. The following year, Meyler and Hall were advanced money by Henry Bright and Richard Meyler [Senior] to assist with financing the plantation. Kenneth Morgan writes: "Henry also seems to have acted through gritted teeth, providing financial help to a relative who had sorely tried his patience." In the following years, the estate was renamed again, this time to Meylersfield.

The ODNB entry also shows him to be the owner of land in St Catherine and property in Kingston.

Henry Francis Bright [sic] was listed in the Jamaican Quit Rent books for 1754 as the owner of 600 acres of land in St Catherine.

We are grateful to Steven Carter for his assistance in compiling this entry.

Kenneth Morgan (ed), The Bright-Meyler Papers: A Bristol-West India Connection, 1732-1837. United Kingdom: OUP/British Academy, 2007, pp. 46, 49, 124.

Kenneth Morgan, ‘Bright, Henry (1715–1777)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/50515, accessed 21 March 2017].

'A List of landholders in the Island of Jamaica together with the number of acres each person possessed taken from the quit rent books in the year 1754', TNA CO 142/31 transcribed at http://www.jamaicanfamilysearch.com/Samples2/1754lead.htm.