Brownson, Nathan, 1742-1796

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. Nathan Brownson was a member of the Society of the Cincinnati of the State of Georgia.

Born in Woodbury in the Connecticut Colony, Brownson graduated from Yale College before studying medicine and practicing in Woodbury. He settled in Liberty County, Georgia in 1764, continuing the practice of medicine. In 1774, he moved to St. John Parish, Georgia; he was among the eleven delegates chosen to represent the parish at the provincial congress, which met in Savannah in July 1775. Brownson was then elected to represent Georgia in the Second Continental Congress, serving from January to May 1777 and again from late August to early October of the same year.

In 1781, Brownson was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives, serving as Speaker; later that year, he was elected Governor, serving from August 1781 to January 1782. During the decade following the end of the American Revolutionary War, Brownson served the public almost continuously as justice of the peace, as a commissioner for erecting a new capital in Louisville, as a member of the convention that ratified the federal constitution, as a delegate to the convention that drafted the state constitution in 1788, and as the first president of the Georgia Senate. He was appointed by Congress as deputy purveyor of hospitals and later to the charge of the southern hospitals. He was one of the trustees for the establishment of Franklin College, later called the University of Georgia.

Brownson died at his plantation in 1796 in Riceboro, Georgia and was buried in Midway Cemetery in Midway, Georgia.