The land on which the house known as Brandon Hall now stands first passed into private ownership as a royal grant from the Spanish King Carlos III to one Frederick Calvit, an American, in the year 1788. The grant of 798 American acres came through the offices of Don Estevan Miro, governor of the Spanish province of Louisiana.
Apparently Frederick Calvit died before developing the property and his executors sold it to one John Roberts who also died shortly after he acquired it. In 1809 the executor of Roberts sold the land to William Lock Chew at public auction for the sum of $7,000.
It appears that Chew constructed the first permanent dwelling on the land consisting of a three room brick house, about 20 ft. by 60 ft. built sometime between 1809 and 1820. This structure still exists as the basement of the present house known as Brandon Hall. A daughter of William and Rebecca Chew married one Spence Grayson and bore him a daughter, Rebecca Chew Grayson, who died in 1833 at the age of two and is buried together with her uncle, Thomas Grayson, in a tomb not more than a hundred yards from Brandon Hall.
In 1833, Chew sold the property to Nathaniel Hoggatt a successful planter and the owner of a large adjoining tract. Hoggatt’s daughter, Charlotte, was married on October 29, 1840 to Gerard Brandon III, the son of an early governor of Mississippi and the grandson of a Revolutionary War hero of the same name who, during his lifetime, had resided at Selma plantation only a short distance from the Chew property. After their marriage Gerard and Charlotte apparently lived in the house built by William Chew and when Hoggatt died late in 1853 they inherited the property and began construction of Brandon Hall, completing the house in 1856.
