Charles Branscomb

Charles Branscomb was born on June 16, 1822, in Newmarket, New Hampshire.^[3][4] He attended Phillips Exeter Academy for his secondary education, graduating in 1839.^[5][6] Afterwards, he graduated from Dartmouth College (1845) and the Cambridge Law School (1848).^[5] After passing the bar, he served for a time as a lawyer in Holyoke, Massachusetts.^[5][7] In the 1850s, he became a member of the New England Emigrant Aid Society, at one point serving as its secretary pro tempore.^[8]

In 1854, he and Charles L. Robinson surveyed Kansas Territory, looking for suitable land upon which the Emigrant Aid Society could found a town dedicated to the free state cause.^[7] Later that year, he led the first group of colonists supported by the Emigrant Aid Society to the territory and helped establish the city of Lawrence.^[9][10] Until 1858, Branscomb worked for New England Emigrant Aid Society, after which he founded a private law firm in Lawrence. Branscomb later served in the territorial legislature and voted on the Leavenworth Constitution.^[5]

In the 1860s, he moved to St. Louis, where in 1866 he ran for a seat on the Missouri General Assembly against Francis Preston Blair Jr.^[11] The election was contested, but in the end, Branscomb won out after the Missouri Attorney General Robert Franklin Wingate ruled that votes cast after sundown were valid.^[12] When Ulysses S. Grant ascended to the US presidency, Branscomb was appointed consul to England and served in Manchester.^[2] In 1874, Branscomb returned to Lawrence, and in 1886 he ran for Kansas governor as the Prohibition Party nominee, coming in third (with 2.96% of the vote).^[2][1] In 1890, Branscomb and his family moved to Denver, Colorado, where he died on January 3, 1891, of pneumonia.^[6][2][13] He was buried at Holyoke.^[2]