James Rufus Bratton (1821–1897) was a doctor, army surgeon, civic leader, and leader in the Ku Klux Klan in South Carolina with whom he was guilty of committing numerous crimes. Bratton trained in medicine in Philadelphia in the 1840s but spent most of his life in Yorkville, South Carolina. He joined the Confederate Army as an assistant surgeon in April 1861, the opening month of the American Civil War. After the war, he became an opponent of Reconstruction and a leader of the Ku Klux Klan. He was one of the leaders linked in the lynching and killing of local black leader Jim Williams. This led to a string of violent attacks which eventually led to a large group of York County blacks emigrating to Liberia. Bratton fled to London, Ontario, to escape prosecution, but later was able to return to South Carolina, where he pursued his career in medicine for the remainder of his life. Early life Bratton was born November 12, 1821, in Brattonsville, York County, South Carolina. He had thirteen siblings, and his parents were John Bratton and Harriet Rainey, daughter of James Rainey. His brothers included Thomas Bratton and Napoleon Bonaparte Bratton. His paternal grandparents were Martha and Colonel William Bratton, famous for his victory over Captain Huck of the British army during the American Revolution. Bratton was the first cousin of Confederate General John Bratton. Bratton attended school at Mt. Zion Academy in Winnsboro, South Carolina, and attended the College of South Carolina, where he graduated in 1843. He continued his medical training and in 1845 took a full course in the hospital at the University of Pennsylvania, and graduated from Jefferson Medical College in Pennsylvania. He returned to South Carolina, and in Yorkville he set up a practice with William Moore, the pair partnering for about a year before he opened his own practice in Yorkville in 1847, where he soon took another younger partner. Bratton was a very talented doctor. In a famous case in the mid-1850s, he trephined a skull when the patient suffered great pressure on the brain following a kick by a horse, saving the patient. In 1850 Bratton married Rebecca Massey of Lancaster County. The pair had five sons and two daughters. Bratton's house was originally built by local lawyer Robert Clendinen (1816-1830). It was razed in 1956 and the spot is, as of 2016, identified by a historic