Nathan Brownson

Nathan Brownson (May 14, 1742 – November 6, 1796) was an American physician and statesman. He served Georgia as a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1777 and as the Governor of Georgia in 1781.

Brownson was born in Woodbury, Connecticut, the sixth of ten children born to Timothy (1701–1766) and Abgail Jenner (1707–1784). He graduated from Yale in 1761 and practiced medicine in his hometown. In 1769 he married Elizabeth Lewis. The couple moved to St. John Parish, Georgia, in 1774 and began working a 500-acre plantation near Savannah. He settled in Liberty County, Georgia in 1764 and began his medical practice. Brownson’s wife died in 1775, and the following year he married Elizabeth McLean, with whom he had two children.

In 1774, St. John Parish was a hotbed of revolutionary activity; many of its people were New England Congregationalists by way of Dorchester, South Carolina, a settlement on the Ashley River above Charlestown that had been founded by Puritans from Massachusetts. Brownson and another transplanted Connecticut physician, Lyman Hall, were among the eleven delegates chosen to represent the parish at the provincial congress, which met in Savannah in July 1775. Both men were elected to represent Georgia in the Continental Congress. Brownson served from January to May 1777 and again from late August to early October of the same year.

The British invasion of Georgia in the final days of 1778 was part of the southern theater of the revolution, but with the expulsion of the king’s troops from Augusta in June 1781, factional disputes threatened to spoil the victory. At this critical moment Brownson, then acting as deputy purveyor of hospitals in the South, was dispatched to Georgia with a brigadier’s commission from Congress. A compromise was worked out whereby Brownson became governor and John Twiggs was promoted to brigadier general. Brownson congratulated General Nathanael Greene for his efforts to restore civil government in Georgia.

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