Alfred Brunson, was an itinerant Methodist preacher who traveled a "circuit district" along the Mississippi River between Rock Island, Illinois to Saint Anthony Falls.

The elder Brunson made his permanent residence in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.

In 1847, Benjamin Brunson came to the area to assist his brother, Ira, in making the first plat of the city of Saint Paul.

Ira had led a number of soldiers from Fort Snelling in driving a number of squatters off the military reservation and down to the present site of the city, which was first named "Pig's Eye" after its founder Pierre "Pig's Eye" Parrant.

He built his house in 1855 in Brunson's Addition to the City of Saint Paul, which was a semi-rural area at the time but is now within an inner-city warehouse and industrial district.