The next year, Brantz led a group of other German immigrants to Nash's Station (today's Nashville, Tennessee) via Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where they commissioned riverboats and then sailed them down the Ohio River and up the Cumberland River to their destination.
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.
[1] Brantz later became a merchant captain, sailing his ships to Europe and the Eastern and Western Indies for 20 years.
[2] Brantz also charted the waters around Baltimore and wrote a meteorological book based on weather observations between 1817 and 1837.
Brantz' service as a railroad executive is noted on the 1839 Newkirk Viaduct Monument in Philadelphia.