Lewis Brantz

Who is Lewis Brantz?

Lewis Brantz was a trader in Baltimore, Maryland; a ship captain; and the first president of the Baltimore and Port Deposit Railroad, part of the first rail link between Philadelphia and points south.

Born around 1768 in Würtemberg, Germany, Brantz was educated in Switzerland. In 1784, the 16-year-old emigrated to Baltimore. The next year, Brantz led a group of other German immigrants to Nash's Station via Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where they commissioned riverboats and then sailed them down the Ohio River and up the Cumberland River to their destination. Brantz then led another group back to Baltimore. Nearly 50 years later, his heir Brantz Mayer translated his trip diary from German and published it as "Memoranda of a Journey in the Western Parts of the United States of America, in 1785." Brantz himself returned to Pittsburgh in 1790 and painted the earliest known image of the city.

Brantz later became a merchant captain, sailing his ships to Europe and the Eastern and Western Indies for 20 years. With Christian Mayer, with whom he had emigrated from Germany, he formed the Mayer & Brantz trading company in Baltimore, which was most active from 1802 and 1820.