Heebright?

[kiterunner]

A burial entry I came across in the Elkesley parish register which I'm transcribing for FreeREG:

John Strutt a Heebright Buried July the 9th (1750).

Do you think "Heebright" means Jewish? There are one or two occupations listed in the burials but they don't have "a" before them (e.g. John Kemshall Farmer). And I can't think of an occupation that sounds like Heebright. There are also one or two burials that say "a youth" or "a young woman" after the name, but again, I can't think of anything like that which would be written as Heebright.

John Strutt's children were baptised at the parish church, and the ones who died were buried there, and I haven't seen any mention of them being "Heebrights" which is why I wonder if I've misunderstood it. Or maybe his wife was a Christian, or would the children have more or less had to be baptised anyway in those days?

Of course I will transcribe the word as seen anyway, but I'm just nosy!

[Mary from Italy]

I wouldn't have thought a Jewish person would be buried in a Christian church, would they?

[kiterunner]

What else could it mean, though?

[Margaret in Burton]

Googling seems to suggest something Hebrew or Jewish

[Olde Crone]

I doubt if there would be a Jewish burial ground in the area, so the parish churchyard would probably be the only burial place anyway.

How odd though. I have seen "Jew" written in a church record, but never "Hebright" and I'm racking my brains to think what else it might be,

OC

[kiterunner]

There are some idiosyncratic spellings in those PR's, such as the first name Beangiman, which had me puzzled for a while. I did check the BT's for John Strutt's burial but it didn't say anything in there except his name and the date.

[Mary from Italy]

Light dawns...

wheelwright?

[kiterunner]

I don't think so, Mary. It definitely says "a Heebright".

[Mary from Italy]

Hmm. I wrote down Heebright in scrawly writing, and it could be mistaken for wheelwright, especially if the spelling's eccentric.

[Tilly Mint]

I think i remember something like this....i think a Hebright / Heebright, is an upstanding member of the Jewish community.

[kiterunner]

Mary, thanks for the suggestion but it isn't written in scrawly writing, and as I said, the occupations don't have "a" before them.

Thanks for that, Jacky. Sounds likely, though I still wonder why his children were baptised in the church.

[Merry]

I still wonder why his children were baptised in the church.

If his wife wasn't Jewish then his children wouldn't be classed as Jews either, I suppose.

[Phoenix]

Mary, thanks for the suggestion but it isn't written in scrawly writing, and as I said, the occupations don't have "a" before them.

Thanks for that, Jacky. Sounds likely, though I still wonder why his children were baptised in the church.

Registers can be nice & neat because the original details were scrawled on loose scraps of paper & then copied up later. It is just possible that a temporary curate had appalling handwriting (or had misheard what was said)

I speak as someone with the surname Strutt in the family who I don't think were Jewish.

[kiterunner]

Elkesley was a tiny village and the registers look to have been written up by the parish clerk, Phoenix.

[Phoenix]

Just throwing the idea in as a forlorn hope, really. Though you can't tell who was actually officiating before 1812.

Most of my ancestors come from parishes so small that you would think there was no excuse to muddle the entries, and the rector neatly signed that it was a true record at the annual archdeacon's visitation, but some very strange things still slipped through.