John P. Bratt: The English Immigrant Who Ran Cattle Along the Platte

Who was John P. Bratt?

John Bratt began as a shipwreck survivor with nothing and ended as the mayor of North Platte, Nebraska. In between he ran one of the larger cattle outfits on the Platte River during the years when Texas herds and Union Pacific rails turned central Nebraska into cattle country. The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum honors him in its Hall of Great Westerners for that pioneering role in Nebraska's cattle industry, and the museum's biography of Bratt is the shortest way into his life.

From Staffordshire to the Nebraska frontier

Bratt was born on August 9, 1842, in Leek, Staffordshire, England, the son of a minister. He was apprenticed to a merchant at twelve and had his own general store in Manchester by eighteen. He emigrated at 21, reaching New York in June 1864 and Chicago that August, where he started a business on South Water Street. According to the Nebraska State Historical Society finding aid, he also survived a shipwreck in the Gulf of Mexico that year and lost his property.

The next step was far from any city. In 1865 he went to Nebraska City and worked as a bullwhacker, driving oxen for a freighting firm that hauled supplies west. About 1869 he was hired as a bookkeeper by the Coe and Carter Cattle Company, based at Fort McPherson, and he later became its general foreman.

Building John Bratt and Company

In 1870 Bratt formed John Bratt and Company with his employers, Isaac Coe and Levi Carter. The historical society's record says the firm ran 10,000 to 15,000 head of cattle on open range between the Platte River, Medicine Creek and Red Willow Creek, west of Fort McPherson and east of O'Fallon's Bluffs. The home ranch stood four miles southeast of North Platte. Those numbers come from the archival biography, so treat them as reported rather than audited.

The setting matters. This was unfenced government range, and the business depended on grass, water and a rail line close enough to ship from. North Platte, on the Union Pacific, gave the outfit that outlet.

Trails of Yesterday: his own account

Bratt wrote an autobiography, Trails of Yesterday, and a copy is held in the Nebraska State Historical Society's library. Researchers who want his own voice on the Platte cattle years should start there, alongside the Nebraska State Historical Society finding aid for his papers.

Mayor of North Platte and county commissioner

Bratt's public service began early. In 1872 he served as a commissioner of the newly formed Frontier County. Later he served two terms as mayor of North Platte. The sources do not give the years of his mayoral terms, so this profile does not guess at them.

Putting a cattleman in the mayor's office made sense in a town whose economy ran on stock shipments, but the records are better at listing his offices than at describing what he did in them.

After the range: stockyards and a meat market

Once homesteaders settled the range, Bratt bought stockyards in North Platte and worked as a cattle dealer and meat market operator. That kept him inside the beef business without needing open grass. In the early 1900s he moved into real estate and insurance with E. R. Goodman. He died in North Platte on June 15, 1918, survived by his wife, Elizabeth, and four daughters.

Why Bratt is remembered

Bratt is remembered as a pioneer of the Nebraska cattle industry who also gave the town of North Platte civic leadership. For stories about the people and places that built American beef, browse the ranching section of farm.FM, and see a farm.FM story about Nebraska cattle country for more on the region.