Lemuel de Bra
American short story writer
Lemuel Lawrence de Bra (December 10, 1884 – August 24, 1954) was an American author, mostly of short stories.
While working for the Bureau of Internal Revenue and later the Secret Service in California, de Bra wrote adventure stories for boys as Edmond Lawrence, verse as L. L. de Bra, and grown-up stories, often about the Chinese in America, as Lemuel L. de Bra and L. de Bra. He also wrote non-fiction, often related to agriculture. He made writing his main career about 1922, when he moved to Florida.
Early life
The son of Lemuel Manuel de Bra and his wife Eleanor Helen Brainerd, a native of Anson, Wisconsin, de Bra was born in 1884 in Benton, Ringgold County, Iowa. A sister called Nellie was born in Blairstown, Iowa, in 1886 and died in 1888, and a brother, Francis, was born in Blairstown in 1889. Their father died in 1890. Their mother had three sons from a previous marriage, one of whom died at Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, in 1895, aged nineteen.
De Bra's grandfather, David Debra, born in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, died in Iowa in April 1897, aged ninety. His ancestor Jacob Dubree, Debour, Dibry, Dippery, or Dibbery, had emigrated from France to Pennsylvania in the 18th century.
The public source identifies “Lemuel de Bra” as american short story writer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Lemuel, American and short.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q123220239. VIAF identifies the subject as 5400175000082145110007. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1884, 1954, 1922 and 1886.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lemuel de Bra” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.