How Brevard County Got Its Name (1855)

Brevard County is named for Theodore Washington Brevard, a North Carolinian who served as Florida’s comptroller from 1853 to 1861. The county already existed when it got his name. It was created on March 14, 1844, as St. Lucie County, and the legislature renamed it Brevard County in 1855. Both facts come from the National Park Service’s documentation of Titusville’s history, which also calls him Judge Brevard.

So the short answer is: a rename, not a new county, and a namesake who was a state official in Tallahassee rather than a local settler.

Before Brevard was Brevard

The county that became Brevard was cut from the old territorial Mosquito County. When St. Lucie County was established in 1844, it took the southern part of that territory; the 1855 change gave the same county a new name.

What it didn’t yet include was Titusville. The town that is now the county seat was settled after the Civil War inside Volusia County. In 1879 Brevard annexed the southern part of Volusia, Titusville with it, which made Brevard one of the longest counties in Florida, about 75 miles along the Atlantic and the Indian River. County voters then chose Titusville as their seat. That story is on our page about why Titusville is the county seat.

Two St. Lucie Counties

The name St. Lucie has now belonged to two different Florida counties. The first was this one, from 1844 until it became Brevard in 1855. The second is the present St. Lucie County, centered on Fort Pierce, which was split off the southern end of Brevard in 1905. If an old record says “St. Lucie County” and predates 1855, it means the county that became Brevard.

Who Brevard was

The National Park Service history gives the essentials: a North Carolinian, a judge, Florida’s comptroller from 1853 to 1861. He had a son of the same name, Theodore Washington Brevard Jr., who became a Confederate brigadier general, and the two are easy to confuse; the portrait above is the son. The county honors the comptroller.

Like several Florida counties named for officials of their day, Brevard carries the name without much connection to the man. What it carries from its origins is its shape: a strip of coast along a lagoon.

Further Reading

• Florida: A Short History by Michael Gannon