Author: BRAND, John
Biography:
BRAND, John (1744-1806: ODNB).
Born on 19 Aug. 1794 at Washington, County Durham, he was baptised on 11 Sept. of the same year. He was the son of Alexander Brand, parish clerk, and his wife Elizabeth Wheatley; they had married in Washington on 3 Dec. 1743. His mother died in Feb. 1746 and, on his father’s remarriage on 15 Apr. 1748, he moved to Newcastle to be cared for by his uncle, Anthony Wheatley. He attended the Royal Grammar school before being apprenticed to his uncle, a cordwainer, on 4 Sept. 1758. He became a freeman of the company of cordwainers in Dec. 1768 but by then a mentor, Hugh Moises, had helped to send him to Lincoln College, Oxford (matric 10 Oct. 1768, BA 1775). He was ordained in 1770 and was made curate at Bolam in Durham before moving to St. Andrew’s in Newcastle in 1773. In 1774 he became perpetual curate at Cramlington, Northumberland. Brand served as under-usher at the Royal Grammar school (1778-81) and became usher in 1781. In 1784 the Duke of Northumberland presented him to the living of St. Mary-at-Hill with St. Andrew Hubbard, Lovat Lane, London; Brand also served the Duke as his private chaplain and secretary. He had become a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1778 and, with the move to London, he was elected secretary—a position he held until his death when the society’s papers and accounts were discovered to be in disarray. He also served as president of Sion College, the guild of clergymen in the City of London. Brand never married and he often lived in Somerset House, letting out his rectory at St. Mary-at-Hill; he was twice prosecuted for non-residence in his parish. He amassed a significant library of rare and valuable antiquarian books which, after his death in the rectory on 11 Sept. 1806, was auctioned for £17000. By the terms of his will, the funds went to his elderly aunt, Anne Wheatley of Newcastle. He was buried in the churchyard of his church and later reinterred in the cemetery at West Norwood. His only other book of verse is Collection of Poetical Essays (1765). He also published Observations on Popular Antiquities (1777), and The History of Newcastle (1789); these were based on earlier works by another Newcastle antiquary, Henry Bourne. (ODNB 24 June 2023; findmypast.co.uk 24 June 2023; ancestry.co.uk 24 June 2023; Eneas Mackenzie, A Descriptive and Historical Account of the Town and County of Newcastle [1827])