Ferdinand F.S. de Brahm (414)

Ferdinand Joseph Sébastien de Brahm (1752–1822) was a surveyor, military engineer, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1784. From Germany, de Brahm began work as a military Engineer under the Prince-Elector of Trier before coming to America to assist his uncle, William Gerard de Brahm, the Surveyor General of Georgia, South Carolina, and East Florida, in charting a series of nautical maps. Then, upon the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, de Brahm joined the Corps of Engineers, attaining the rank of Captain and then Major. He charted maps of campaigns in New York and Pennsylvania (1777-1779); during the siege of Charleston he kept an extremely detailed journal of the onslaught (1780).