COL ALEXANDER C BRANSCOM

Alias:

Specialties: FORGER, SWINDLER

No: 97 Last Displayed: 10/18/2022

Description:

Forty-four years old in 1886. Born in Virginia. Medium build. Single. Claims to be a book publisher. Height, 6 feet. Weight, 178 pounds. Medium brown hair, dark gray eyes, ruddy complexion. Good education; converses well. Right arm off at the elbow.

Record:

COL. BRANSCOM is an expert forger and swindler. He was sentenced to three years and six months in State prison in August,1880, in New York City, for forging Florida bonds. His expertness with the pen is a marvel, in view of his being obliged to write with his left hand, his right arm having been cut off at the elbow. His correspondence while conducting his swindling operations, large as it has been, was entirely written by himself, and does equal credit to his powers of invention and to his skillful penmanship. Not a detail calculated to convey confidence was lacking in any of his transactions. He was arrested again in New York City on November 2, 1884 During August of that year he made several contracts with business men in New York to publish and advertise in an official guide to the New Orleans Exposition; and a highly decorated pamphlet, "The Diversified Industries of the South." He contracted with Conroy Brothers, paper dealers, of No. 33 Beekman Street, New York City, on August 14, 1884, for $7,000 worth of white paper for his publications, and gave them a note for $7,000, purported to be indorsed by Colonel Edward Richardson, the millionaire president of the Mississippi Mills, at Wesson, Miss., and at that time president of the WorId's Exposition at New Orleans. Branscom uttered about $40,000 worth of similar notes in New York, and when arrested he confessed that he had forged endorsements to $S2,000 more, and had intended to issue about $110,000 worth in all. If he had succeeded, he said, he would have carried his publications through and cleared $50,000. In addition to the money collected by the notes, Branscom also got orders for $6,000 worth of advertisements in the blank space of his two books, and he planned to collect $30,000 more from the same source. His cash collected. from all sources in this transaction enabled him to deposit $ 14,000 in the Shoe and Leather Bank of New York, but two-thirds of this amount he subsequently drew out.Branscom was convicted of the forgery of one note for $7,000, and was sentenced to ten years in State prison in the Court of Oeneral Sessions, New York, on March 14, 1885, by Recorder Smyth. Branscom's picture is a good one, taken in November, 1884