John William Gerard de Brahm (August 20, 1718 - June 6, 1799) was a German cartographer, hydrographer, engineer, and mystic. De Brahm was born in Koblenz, Germany, the son of Johann Phillip von Brahm, a court musician for the Elector of Trier. He studied engineering in Germany, reaching the rank of Captain Engineer in the Imperial Army of Holy Roman Emperor Charles VII. He resigned this commission in 1748 and shortly thereafter married, at the same time renouncing Catholicism in favor of Luthernism. After his marriage, he led a group of German immigrants to Georgia, then a British Colony, to settle in the German-Lutheran community of Ebenezer. In 1854 he became the Surveyor General of the Georgia Colony, a position he held until 1764. Druing this time, he produced his most important published work, A Map of South Carolina and a Part of Georgia. Afterwards he became Surveyor General for East Florida and the Southern District. In this and subsequent posts he traveled from Florida to Virginia, making a series of detailed maps, many of which survive only in manuscript. In his travels, de Brahm developed close relationships with American Indians whose traditional ways he deeply respected. This led him to become a fervent opponent to not only European colonialism, but also attempts to 'civilize' indigenous populations. During the American Revolutionary War (1775 - 1783) he was imprisoned in Charleston as a British Loyalist. By 1778 de Brahm was in Britain. In 1784, after the War, he returned to America settling in Philadelphia, where he died 12 years later. At some point he became an adherent to the teaching of the heretical German mystic Jakob Böhme (1575 - 1624), who argued that one must fall from grace in order to be redeemed.