Author: Branagan, Thomas
Biography:
BRANAGAN, Thomas (1774-1843: Leary)
Born in Dublin to a Roman Catholic family, he was baptised on 27 Dec. 1774, the son of Anne and Thomas Branagan. He went to sea at 14 and when 16 served on a slave ship. He spent four years as an overseer on a sugar plantation in Antigua. He was converted to Methodism and became convinced of the evils of slavery. Finding that his family in Ireland rejected him on account of his conversion to Protestantism, he emigrated to Philadelphia in 1798 and became a preacher. He began to write about slavery and continued to write on controversial topics. His first important work, A Preliminary Essay, on the Oppression of the Exiled Sons of Africa (1804), is a long analysis of the evils of slavery "preliminary" to his poem Avenia. He died of palsy on 12 June 1843 and was buried on 15 June at St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church, Philadelphia. He may have married Anne Williams (b 1783) in 1799 but confirmation is lacking. (ancestry.com 16 July 2025; findmypast 2 July 2025; Lewis Leary, Soundings: Some Early American Writers [1975]) HJ