Toponymie | Canton de Potton | Place Names

No history of Potton – road names or otherwise, would be complete without mention of the Boright family in Potton.  The influence of this family on Brome County, as a whole, was substantial; however in Potton, two brothers were of particular note: Nelson and Sheldon, children of Henry Boright (1798-1891) and his wife Tryphosa Sheldon (1797-1851). Others in the Boright family settled in Sutton Township.  Originally this family came from Saint-Armand to our west.

Nelson and Sheldon Boright “acquired a farm on the east side of the Missisquoi River in Mansonville and opened a store on the west side.  Being single men, their sister Maria kept house for them.  She later married Albert Peabody, a representative of one of the early families of South Potton of that name.  These brothers took turns in teaching winter schools (see note** below).  Later they dissolved partnership, Sheldon establishing himself in Richford, Vt. where he remained until his death, and Nelson remained in Potton. (…)  Nelson married Azuba Manson and with her had four children: Fannie, Maude, William Henry and Claude.  Nelson continued in his mercantile business to the end of his days.  At the time of his death, he was the largest owner of real estate in Potton Township.”^[1] The Belden Historical Atlas of 1881 lists Nelson Boright as “the owner of 1,132 acres in Potton, noted that he was a Municipal Councillor, was born in 1828 in St. Armand and settled in Brome County in 1853.”  Nelson's oldest daughter Fannie married Dr. David Roger who practiced medicine in Mansonville for a goodly number of years.  His sons, William Henry and Claude Boright, remained in Mansonville.^[2]  Others in the family conducted successful enterprises in Sutton Township.  Both Nelson Boright and his son, Claude, were Mayors of the Municipality in the early 1900's.  Nelson Boright was also Warden of the County in 1897. 

Chemin Boright is built on the original Boright farm, which is now a residential housing development.  The Boright barn still stands as part of the heritage landscape of Mansonville.

As a matter of interest:  Up to around the late 1850's, rural one room schools, for the most part, had two terms, for practical reasons and often economically motivated:  “A four month summer term, attended by the little ones, and a four month winter term, generally under a man teacher, for older students, sometimes up to eighteen or twenty years of age made up the school year.”^[3]  “When the harvest was gathered and the threshing largely done, the young men and women of the neighbourhood would gather in for four months attendance at school; there was little use to attempt to hold school beyond the beginning of the sugar making season.”^[4] ”(…) the usual winter term beginning in November and ending in March.”^[5]