He attended the common schools and, at the age of fourteen, entered a local printing business.

At seventeen, he and a schoolmate, William R. DeLoach, who later became Judge of the probate court in Sumter County, established a newspaper in Milton, Florida.

[1] During the latter part of the U.S. Civil War, while still engaged in the newspaper business in Florida, Brewer entered the Confederate States Army.

[1] Brewer was appointed Treasurer of Lowndes County, Alabama, in 1871 by Governor Robert B. Lindsay.

After an unsuccessful bid for renomination in 1900, he resumed the practice of law and continued his work as an author.