Brighton, Massachusetts

Brighton is a dissolved municipality and current neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, United States, and is located in the northwest corner of the city. It is named after the town of Brighton in the English city of Brighton and Hove. For its first 160 years Brighton was part of Cambridge and was known as “Little Cambridge." Throughout much of its early history it was a rural town with a significant commercial center at its east end. Brighton separated from Cambridge in 1807 after a bridge dispute and was later annexed to Boston, in 1874. It is now a large community jointly with the adjacent neighborhood of Allston. Its population is predominantly white and Asian, with smaller numbers of Latinos and African Americans.

History

In 1630, land comprising present-day Allston-Brighton and Newton was assigned to Watertown. In 1634, the Massachusetts Bay Colony transferred ownership of the south side of the Charles River, including present-day Allston-Brighton and Newton, from Watertown to Newetowne, later renamed Cambridge.

In 1646, Reverend John Eliot established a “Praying Indian” village on the present Newton-Brighton boundary, where resided local native converted to Christianity. The first permanent English settlement came as settlers crossed the Charles River from Cambridge, establishing Little Cambridge, the area's...
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