Brahan was originally from
Fauquier County, Virginia. He was married to Mary Weakley, daughter of Tennessee politician and landowner
Robert Weakley. Brahan was paymaster of the Tennessee militia in 1804 at
Fort Southwest Point. He and William Dickson were appointed to work at the Nashville Land Office on April 10, 1809. Brahan was in the
Natchez District of
Mississippi Territory when his appointment came through. A military staff list published at Natchez in May 1809 listed Brahan as a captain. Both Brahan and Dickson were land speculators. Brahan's job was "receiver of public monies" and Dickson's job was registrar. Both men had a connection to
William P. Anderson who was the district surveyor "who had been one of those instrumental in effecting" the
Chickasaw treaty of 1805, and to an extended network of speculators and surveyors that included
James Jackson,
John Coffee, John Drake,
John Strother,
Edward Ward, and
Thomas Freeman. Many of this group were long-time allies of Tennessee planter and speculator
Andrew Jackson, and connected to one another by a dense web of business and family ties. These men were all early buyers of lands in the vicinity of the
Big Spring, shortly thereafter organized as the town Twickenham, Madison County,
Mississippi Territory. The settlement quickly discarded "Twickenham," reverting to the name which had been used by the squatters who already lived there, and by which it is now known:
Huntsville, Alabama. Per approved petition to the U.S. Congress made by Brahan, the Nashville Land Office became the Huntsville Land Office on August 7, 1811. In 1811, Brahan was also serving as the receiving officer for the
Cherokee Indian Agency at Huntsville, and wrote to
Return J. Meigs, "It is rumored that the
Creeks are preparing for war against us, if true they must be a blind people, and will no doubt prove their own destruction." Brahan and
Leroy Pope both served as "principal contractors for Jackson's army during the
Creek War." In March 1814, "from
Fort Strother, Jackson subcontracted with the Huntsville firm of Pope and Brahan," ordering rations for 3,000 for 40 days. However, Madison County merchants "had difficulty fulfilling their promises. Jackson had to plead directly to the wealthiest planters in Madison County to secure cornmeal for his starving soldiers." Leroy Pope was at the center of a crew of Virginians and Georgians including
Thomas Bibb,
William Bibb,
Charles Tait, and his son-in-law
John Williams Walker, who eventually became so politically powerful in Madison County and Alabama generally that they were called the "Royal Party." This group were also connected to William H. Crawford, soon to be Secretary of the Treasury, and a once and future enemy of Jackson. In January 1818, Brahan, John Read, three Popes (including LeRoy), Thomas Bibb, and others were named directors of Planters' and Merchants' Bank of Huntsville. In November Brahan advertised that he had two cotton gins running in Spring Grove near Huntsville. In 1818, a commission merchant in Natchez listed Braham & Hutchings of Huntsville as a reference in an advertisement; Braham was a common misspelling of Brahan, and Hutchings was most likely Andrew Jackson's nephew
John Hutchings, although he had already died the prior autumn. The same year chronicler
Anne Royall visited Huntsville and wrote in a letter, "General Brahan, of the late war, is a prince, in whatever light he may be viewed. He is polite and affable; of great size; handsome person; of middle age, and a man of great wealth." The
Panic of 1819 hit Tennessee and Alabama Territory hard, and the usual cascade of financial failure following times of rampant speculation began. As hints of irregularities began to emerge, officials in Washington inquired with Brahan, but it was 17 months from start to finish before they received any kind of useful disclosure. In March 1819,
Josiah Meigs wrote him "I am directed by the
Secretary of the Treasury to inform you that he is extremely dissatisfied on account of your neglecting to settle your accounts, that no longer delay is admissibleand that if an immediate settlement is not made it will be necessary to adopt such measures as will better secure the rights & interests of the Government." In June 1819 Brahan wrote Meigs "I have the mortification to inform you that there is a considerable deficiency in my cash account, the cause I can only account for in part" and resigned from the job. According to Treasury Secretary
William H. Crawford the account was short and he suspected most of it was in Brahan's hands. Historian
Chase C. Mooney quotes a letter from Crawford about the Brahan–Huntsville debacle as the Secretary's
de facto "code of ethics for the public official" of the United States: As it happened, explained historian Ruth Ketring Nuermberger: "Brahan himself ended up with 44,677 acres and an indebtedness of $318,579. The down payment of $78,901 he blandly made from federal funds. Under pressure from the secretary of the treasury for a settlement of his accounts, Brahan assigned all his property to the United States. Valued at just over $46,000, it included 1,260 acres of land, several town lots in Huntsville, and $31,425 in notes due Brahan." One of the receivers in charge of holding the accounts on behalf of the U.S. government was Leroy Pope.
George Mason wrote
Clement Comer Clay, "Brahan will be considerably injured if not ruined; and the fur will be jerked off old Pope and some of his ill-gotten gains will go into the pockets of others. These men with several others of the same class have now got large debts running on them at ten per cent a month! ! !" In May 1819 John Brahan had been on deck to buy Andrew Jackson's
Evans Spring plantation but the deal never came to pass. There was a Congressional investigation into Brahan's default, which can be found in
House Doc., No. 130 (serial 69), 17th Cong., 1st sess. and
No. 149 (serial 102), 18th Cong., 1st sess. Brahan, Coffee, and John Read testified had been trying to buy up as much land as they could to keep the Georgia combination from doing it first, all in the interests of protecting the people. On July 8, 1815, Brahan formed a partnership "for the purpose of carrying on the mercantile business in Nashville, Tennessee" with Will Atwood. Brahan and Atwood moved to Huntsville in the fall of 1817, operating until March 1819 "when we sold out the remainder of our goods." In 1822, in one of her last letters from Huntsville, Royall mentioned Brahan again, writing: In 1824 Brahan advertised to Huntsville that he would gin and bale cotton for "a twelfth part." In 1827 the
Pensacola Gazette and West Florida Advertiser credited Brahan with introducing to the state a grape variety known as the
Bland Madeira, "which makes an excellent wine." In June 1828, Congress passed a "private act" appropriating $6,964.99 to repay Brahan for expenses of "clerk hire" while he was receiver of public monies in Alabama. During the
1828 U.S. presidential election, there was a dispute over who had legally owned an enslaved man named John Amp, whom Jackson had reportedly armed to serve as an enforcer contra Choctaw agent
Silas Dismorewas Amp the property of Jackson, former mayor of Nashville
Joseph Coleman, or Brahan? Anti-Jackson campaign organizer
Andrew Erwin, quoting from a letter written by Brahan's father-in-law Robert Weakley stating (among other things) that John Amp was "raised by me" and then was transferred to his daughter's husband Brahan, wrote a public letter addressing
Jackson's work as a slave trader and commented on the circumstances of
John Amp in 1811–12, "It seems from this letter, that the purchase from Epperson was not the only negro speculation in which your firm was concerned. You bought of John Brahan, and probably, if all the transactions could be brought to light, of several other persons." In August 1828, the trustees of the Cottonport Land Company, John Coffee, James Jackson, James Bright, and John Brahan, scheduled a company meeting for October in Nashville. In 1829 the circuit court of
Madison County, Alabama ruled on a business dispute involving the purchase of "sundry negroes," the buyer of which paid for in part with a note from John Brahan from 1819 for $6,662. Brahan was chair of a committee to organize an Episcopal Church in Huntsville in 1830 and was named a
vestryman. In 1832, Brahan's daughter, Jane Brahan, married
Robert M. Patton, later
governor of Alabama. The couple were married for over 50 years. The same year Brahan chaired an Anti-Union and Anti-Nullification Meeting at which
William Smith and
C. C. Clay made speeches. Brahan's slaves started construction and brick making on
Sweetwater Mansion in about 1834 but he did not live to see it completed and it ultimately came into possession of Robert and Jane Patton. Brahan died in
Florence, Alabama in 1834. His executors planned to auction off 129 people he had legally enslaved on February 1, 1835, in front of the Madison County courthouse. "Dick, an old servant" of Braham was listed for sale later that year, auction to be held July 1. In December 1835 the estate executor published notice that unless people who bought from Braham's estate paid their debts within three weeks of due date, lawsuits would be initiated and further interest would accumulate. Brahan's widow died in 1837. == See also ==