Brigman was born in the Nu‘uanu Pali above Honolulu, Hawaii, on 3 December 1869. She was the oldest of eight children born to Mary Ellen Andrews Nott, whose parents moved to Hawaii as missionaries in 1828. Her father, Samuel Nott, was from Gloucester, England. When she was sixteen her family moved to Los Gatos, California, and nothing is known about why they moved or what they did after arriving in California. In 1894 she married a sea captain, Martin Brigman. She accompanied her husband on several voyages to the South Seas, returning to Hawaii at least once.