William Gerard de Brahm: Eccentric Genius of Southeastern Geography

WILLIAM GERARD DE BRAHM: ECCENTRIC GENIUS OF SOUTHEASTERN GEOGRAPHY Louis De Vorsey, Jr.° With the signing of a definitive treaty of peace at Paris on February10, 1763, Britain assumed control of virtually the whole of North America east ofthe Mississippi River. Included in this expanded overseas empire were the formerly French territories in Canada and the Mississippi valley as well as the extensive Spanish mainland territory known as Florida. These vast new domains had been only vaguely charted and superficially exploited by their original French and Spanish overlords and to the British they were terrae incognitae in the fullest sense of the term. (J ) British royal advisors and administrators immediately felt the pressing need for accurate maps and geographic information as they began to grapple with the enormous task of developing and administering George Ill's vast new domain. In a communication to the King, composed early in 1764, the Board of Trade admitted, "we find ourselves under the greatest difficulties arising from the want of exact surveys of these countries in America, many parts ofwhich have never been surveyed at all and others so imperfectly that the charts and maps thereof are not to be depended upon." The King's chief advisory panel went on to conclude that, "in this situation we are reduced to the necessity of making Representation to Your Majesty, founded upon little or no information, or of delaying the important service of settling these parts of Your Majesty's Dominions." (2 ) Such a condition was clearly intolerable . The Board concluded with a recommendation,"in the strongest manner , that no time should be lost in obtaining accurate surveys of all Your Majesty's North American Dominions but more especially of such parts as from their natural advantages require our immediate attention." Not surprisingly , these last mentioned "parts" were designated as Atlantic Canada and East Florida. To implement these much needed surveys, two new administrative units were created in America. They were the Northern and Southern Districts divided by the Potomac River. A Surveyor General was appointed and charged with the responsibility for conducting detailed geographical surveys in each district. Named as the Surveyor General for the Northern District was Captain Samuel Holland, a well-recognized military engineer and cartographer . (3) To fill the southern office, the Board ofTrade chose another accomplished engineer-cartographer with a military background and considerable firsthand experience in the region. He was William Gerard De Brahm, then serving with Henry Yonge as one of the two provincial surveyors for the *Dr. De Vorsey is associate professor of geography at the University of Georgia, Athens. The paper was accepted for publication in December 1969. 22Southeastern Geographer colony of Georgia. In July 1764, De Brahm's commission as a joint Surveyor General of Georgia was terminated and he was appointed as Surveyor General of the newly formed colony of East Florida and Surveyor General for the newly created Southern District of North America. William Gerard De Brahm, the eighteenth-century Surveyor General ofthe southern American colonies, was first brought to the attention of geographers by Ralph H. Brown more than thirty years ago. (4) Brown's initial interest centered on De Brahm's published and manuscript materials describing the Gulf Stream and Atlantic Ocean. Perhaps Brown intended to make a more intensive study of De Brahm's other writings and cartographic productions but was denied the opportunity by his untimely death in 1948. In the prologue to his tour de force, Mirror for Americans, Likeness of the Eastern Seaboard 1810, Brown mentioned that Thomas Pownall Keystone had been shown some "ponderous volumes" by "the eccentric William Gerard De Brahm, His Majesty's Surveyor General for the Southern District of North America before the revolution." Brown was familiar with the De Brahm manuscripts located in the Houghton Library at Harvard University which doubtlessly formed the "ponderous volumes" alluded to in Mirrorfor Americans . Until recently, few if any geographers have drawn upon the immensely detailed manuscript maps and description ofcolonial South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida which De Brahm produced during his tenure as the British government's Surveyor General for the Southern District of North America. This is unfortunate, for De Brahm's work was unsurpassed...