Descendants of James Rigby, schoolmaster, d. 1801The Rigbys of Pennsylvania
People  ›  The line of descent

PeopleThe line of descent

Ten generations in the direct male line, from the schoolmaster at Village Green to the present. Named individuals are documented; the last generations are living and are not detailed here.

1
James Rigby  m.  Hannah Brown (c.1736–1824)
1731 or 1737 – 9 March 1801 Schoolmaster; clerk of St Martin’s, Marcus Hook. Eight children.
2
Eli Rigby Sr.  m.  Elizabeth Harlan (1775–1859)
22 April 1771 – 13 April 1859 Nail maker, of Doe Run then Concord Township. Eight children. Buried Chichester Friends.
3
Seth Rigby  m.  Lydia Jane John (1805–1879)
25 August 1802 – 1875 Nail maker; born Doe Run. Married in Philadelphia 1829, for which Lydia was disowned. Buried Middletown M.E.
4
William Henry Rigby  m.  Mary Fleming (1835–1893)
3 January 1830 – 2 November 1907 Millwright, of Lima, Nether Providence and Concord.
5
T. Johns Rigby Sr.  m.  Laura Prudence Smith (1859–1948)
26 June 1858 – 13 October 1933 Born Joseph Townsend John Rigby. The Smith line joins here.
6
Townsend Johns Rigby  m.  Ada Lula Brittain
5 November 1891 – 4 June 1987 “TJ” — homesteader at Quietus, Montana; author of the family memoir.
7
Johns Brittain Rigby  m.  Beatrice Bradley (1916–)
born 1917 “Jack” — U.S. Army, February 1941 to 1946; Europe from April 1943.
8
Three further generations to the present
Living or recent. Not detailed here, per this site’s standing rule on living people. The line runs from Jack’s son to the compiler of these pages.

How the count works

James Rigby is the compiler’s seventh great-grandfather. Counting inclusively — James, then seven greats, then grandfather, father and self — gives ten generations. The older draft chapter on this site is titled “Nine Generations,” which counts to the previous generation; both are describing the same line.

Where the certainty sits

Generations 2 to 6 rest on wills, censuses, church registers and gravestones and are not in dispute. Generation 1 to 2 — James to Eli — is the joint that carries the most weight and the least direct evidence. No document names Eli as James’s son in so many words. The link rests on two compiled genealogies (Smedley 1901 and Harlan 1914, both drawing on family informants), on Eli naming a son Seth and a son James after his father’s household, and on the two men occupying the same small set of townships in sequence. It is the standard state of an eighteenth-century Pennsylvania descent, and it is stated here rather than assumed.

Collateral lines not shown

James’s other seven children have descendants of their own. Daniel (1757–c.1850) went to Ohio, and his estate was partitioned in Jay County, Indiana. Seth (c.1761–1854) died at New Castle, Lawrence County, and his ten children are the western Pennsylvania branch. Eli’s son George W. is the ancestor of the Rigbys who ran an undertaking business in Media for four generations. None of those lines is drawn here; they are held in the archive.