Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2021/Spring/105i/Section 24/Henry Brandon

Overview
Henry Brandon was born in Yanceyville, N.C. to a wealthy Civil War captain. His birth date is unknown. Brandon was interviewed by the Federal Writer's Project between 1936 and 1940 under the alias Jim Lea. The exact date of his interview is not listed.

Personal Life
There is no date for Brandon's birth, it can be assumed he was born shortly before  Prohibition. Brandon was born wealthy, inheriting his father's estates and railroad shares after his death. Brandon studied Law at Harvard and the Sorbonne University in Paris, France. His attorney, George Ducolt was put in charge of his estates and shares while he studied abroad. After returning, Brandon discovered Ducolt had transferred ownership of all but two estates to himself. Brandon killed Ducolt over the money, but was let off with no punishment because of his father.

Brandon began tenant farming on the land and heavily drinking. He was elected to the North Carolina state senate and met his fiancé, Jane Carwell. She died of Typhoid before their marriage and Brandon lost most of the farmland and money to his tenants. Brandon tried to commit suicide shortly after. He was saved and given the remainder of his inheritance by his executor. Brandon opened a bar in town and was offered $15,000 for his last estate by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. After spending most of his remaining money, the U.D.C. received guardianship over Brandon, allowing him to live in the estate he sold. They paid him small portions of his money each month until it ran out. Brandon lived off of almost nothing for a few years before he was eligible to receive an old-age pension from the state. He spent most of his pension each month on alcohol. Brandon's death date and location is unknown.

Prohibition
With a greater emphasis on health and an attempt to combat crime, the U.S. government adopted the Eighteenth Ammendment to ban the manufacture or sale of alcohol. This failed, especially in the South, to limit the consumption of alcohol as local laws rarely enforced Prohibition and varied from state-to-state. Therefore, many Southerners, such as Henry Brandon, had few issues obtaining alcohol, versus northerners with more stringent laws. Prohibition backfired in many ways with the per capita consumption of ethanol increasing nearly one third. After Prohibition and during The Great Depression, Americans consumed around 2.3 gallons of pure alcohol every year.

Birth Control
During the Great Depression, it was common to try to limit the size of one’s family. The cost of raising children was something many families of lower income couldn’t maintain. As a result of this, many laws were that had previously limited the distribution and use of contraceptives and birth control for women were loosened. Among these, the Comstock Act, which had made it illegal to distribute drugs that were used for birth control or abortion was severely weakened by a series of Supreme Court cases. Other wins for advocates of birth control were the opening of the first legal birth control clinic in the U.S. in 1923 and the Supreme Court decision in Young’s Rubber Corporation, Inc., v. C.I. Lee & Co., et al. which lifted restrictions on condom sales in 1930. One of the most vocal advocates for women’s birth control and abortion was the American Communist Party. Largely as a result of restrictive financial times, they pushed birth control as a way to “alleviate the burdens of parenting from the working-class, and partly because of its devotion to women’s rights.”