James Henry Brewster was born at New Haven, Connecticut, April 6, 1856, son of Rev. Joseph and Sarah (Bunce) Brewster. He is ninth in descent from Elder William Brewster, ruling elder of the church in Plymouth.

He was prepared for college in the Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven, and at the age of seventeen entered the Sheffield Scientific School, where he was graduated Bachelor of Philosophy in 1877. Two years later he took the degree of Bachelor of Laws at the Yale Law School and removed to New York City to enter the practice of the law.

In 1881 he was settled in Albany in connection with the legal department of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, with which concern he continued for two years. He then removed to Detroit, Michigan, where he continued in the active practice of his profession for fourteen years. During this period he served two terms on the Board of Education.

In 1897 he was called to the professorship of Conveyancing in the University of Michigan. Since 1903 he has also been editor of "The Michigan Law Review." In 1904 he published "The Conveyance of Estates in Fee by Deed." He was married June 28, 1888, to Frances Stanton, and they have had five children, of whom four survive: Susie, Chauncey Bunce, Edith Navarre, and Oswald Camimann.

Burke A. Hinsdale and Isaac Newton Demmon, History of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1906), pp. 308.