William Gerard De Brahm

Background

William Gerard De Brahm was born in 1717 in Koblenz, Germany.

Career

He prefaced his reports on his surveys of South Carolina, Georgia, and East Florida with summaries of the early history of those provinces. His reports fill four folio volumes, are copiously illustrated with local and general maps, and contain his observations on practicable inlets and rivers, their surroundings, his directions for mariners, his notes on soils, useful trees and shrubs, game, fish, Indians, Spaniards, etc. These volumes show an excellent command of the English language, some classical knowledge, and much special and technical information. De Brahm’s young manhood fell in the period of the scientific renaissance in Europe, when science began to be applied to the affairs of life. It was also a time of political readjustment and colonial expansion.

After serving in the army of Emperor Charles VI as a captain of engineers, De Brahm proceeded in 1751 with 160 Protestant Salzburgers by way of England to Georgia, where he founded Bethany.

Before the end of another year the town’s population was increased by about thirteen hundred relatives and acquaintances of the first settlers. Their progress during the next two decades in agriculture and horticulture was notable among the many German communities of the Georgian coast and Savannah River. When, in August 1754, the king appointed the officials of Georgia, De Brahm was made a surveyor at a salary of £50 per annum. Three years later he planned the town of Ebenezer on the Savannah, erected its fort, and took up lands there on both sides of the river. At that time also he drew the first map of Georgia and South Carolina. In 1755 he rebuilt the curtain line around the battery at Charleston, extending it to Vanderhorst Creek. Six years later he constructed Fort George on Cockspur Island in the Savannah, and in 1762 fortified the town of Savannah against the Indians. After ten years of valuable service, in June 1764, he was appointed by the king surveyor general for the Southern District, at a salary of £150, and was given £30 more for his deputy, Bernard Romans. Early in January 1765 he set out from Savannah in the schooner Augustine with three boats and other equipment for an eighteen weeks cruise to survey the coast from St. Augustine to the Cape of Florida. Meantime, he had been named one of the commissioners to mark the northern boundary of New Jersey from the Hudson to the Delaware. Besides sounding and mapping the inlets along the Florida coast, he platted the land along the rivers flowing into them. He also conducted inland surveys, marking out lands for settlement and locating town sites with their church and school lands. In November 1766 he announced in the South Carolina Gasette, of Charleston, the building of a galley on St. John’s River with which to continue his survey down to the promontory and his wish to employ a master acquainted with the Keys and qualified in theoretical and practical navigation, also a geometrician versed in navigation. During this period his residence was at St. Augustine and he acquired a grant of 10, 000 acres in the province of Florida. On October 4, 1770, Gov. James Grant suspended De Brahm from the provincial surveyorship for incivilities, overcharges, and obstructing applicants for lands.

He appointed De Brahm’s son-in-law, Capt. Frederick George Mulcaster, as his successor; but the Surveyor General continued to perform his duties until he sailed for England. There he produced a map of the Atlantic Ocean for his mariners’ guide, The Atlantic Pilot, published in London in 1772. He also delivered his general map of East Florida to the plantation office, submitted his elaborate report, and sought reinstatement, presenting a memorial to that end in 1774. In the same year he published two volumes, The Levelling Balance and Counter-Balance; or, The Method of Observing, by the Weight and Height of Mercury and De Brahm’s Zonical Tables for the Twenty-Five Northern and Southern Climates.

Nearly two months after his wife's death the Lords of the Treasury wrote to the Council of East Florida that in their opinion the Surveyor should be reinstated. Thereafter De Brahm seems to have divided his time between St. Augustine and Charleston.

Late in the course of the Revolution he wrote to London begging not to be superseded. He was left unprovided for from 1783 to the end of his life, except that he was awarded £1, 138 66 8d for his property losses in Florida by the British commissioners on East Florida claims. During this period he lived in Philadelphia, where he published several small works, including.

Achievements

• John William Gerard De Brahm drew the first map of Georgia and South Carolina.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Atlantic Pilot (Bicentennial Floridiana facsimile series)

    (Book by De Brahm, William Gerard)

  • De Brahm's Report of the General Survey in the Southern District of North America

Connections

On February 18, 1776, he was married to Mary, daughter of Thomas Drayton and widow of Edward Fenwick.

Wife:

Mary Drayton