His father, John Bransby (d. 17 March 1837, aged seventy-five), was an instrument maker, a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and author of a treatise on The Use of the Globes, 1791, and editor of the Ipswich Magazine, 1799.
[1] The son became heterodox in opinion, and was educated for the Unitarian ministry, in the academy maintained at Exeter from 1799 to 1804 by Timothy Kenrick and Joseph Bretland.
Intriguingly he appears as a witness to Edward Mason (probably a lead miner who was illiterate, and almost certainly a monoglot Welsh-speaker) on his marriage at Llanbadarn Fawr near Aberystwyth in 1811,[2] long before his departure from Dudley in 1828.
[1] Bransby died suddenly at Bron Hendref, a substantial house on the outskirts of Caernarfon, on 4 November 1847, aged 64 years, where he is listed in 1841 as keeping a school.
In 1835 he reprinted there (p. 12) an overlooked letter of John Locke; and in 1841 a series of papers, signed "Monticola", contained most of his additions to Evans.