He was a native of Ipswich, had received his ministerial education at the Exeter Presbyterian College, commenced as minister at Moreton Hampstead in Devon, and had then removed to Dudley where he ministered for 20 years. For 18 years after that he lived at Caernarvon (1829 - 1847), keeping some sort of an educational establishment (all we know is that "hearing arithmetical tables" was part of the work there; and that he himself was "a preceptor without a rival"). For these particulars, see p.220, which also contains the obituary notice in the Caernarvon and Denbigh Herald of Nov. 6, 1847. On pp.181, 182, are some details of his family fortunes - the death in 1839 of his mother-in-law, Ann Isaac, widow of the Rev. Jacob Isaac of Moreton Hampstead, and in 1841 the death of his wife Sarah.
There is no doubt that for some years, in the thirties of the last century, he was quite a prominent person in the town: he was much to the fore (pp. 132-133) in the meeting called on May 29, 1838, to determine the most eligible method of celebrating the Corporation of Queen Victoria; he became Hon. Secretary of this movement; and was again one of the chief speakers at the Guild Hall dinner on June 18th. He was one of the founders of the Caernarvon Herald in 1831, and no doubt deserved the words of the Editor in 1847 - "[Mr. Bransby] was a real practical reformer of the Whig School, and had deeply imbibed the safe and wholesome principals of its great founders" (p.220). This explains the prominence given (p.16) to the speech delivered by him at the Reform dinner (June 14, 1831) held at Caernarvon on the day the new Parliament met, in honour of the Hon. Sir. Charles Paget who had been returned as Reform M.P. for the Boroughs just a month before. He was a supporter of the Radical Captain Paget who was beaten in 1837 by William Bulkeley Hughes of Plas Coch (Plas Coch MS. 2833, p.7), and is described in 1847, a few months before his death, as "a party so situated that he cannot help voting with a Paget," (Plas Coch MS. 2836, p. 16). He seems to have lived at Bron Hendre, in the Henwalia district.
He had a ready pen, although the obituary notice has it that his talents were better fitted for other spheres than "public journalism," and even suggests that sometimes his style lacked dignity [of which we have seen no signs]. In 1845 he published 'A Description of Caernarvon and the Neighbouring District,' printed by james Rees, which (on p.81) supplies a piece of information which the present cataloguer had vainly searched for in the more official publications, viz., the names of the two preachers at the 2pm meeting of the Caernarvon Sassiwn of 1833 (cp. Er Clod, 1934, p.155).