|
Robert Brank Vance |
| Robert Brank Vance was born on Reems Creek in Buncombe County, North Carolina on April 24th, 1828. Vance was the eldest son of Captain David Vance and Mira Margaret Baird, and the nephew of Dr. Robert Brank Vance the Congressman. Growing up he had three brothers and four sisters and his younger brother became Governor Zebulon Baird Vance. Robert Vance had a healthy childhood and helped out on the farm that his family owned. In 1844 Vance’s father died. Vance attended local county schools and had access to his late uncle’s library. At the age of twenty he became the clerk of the Buncombe County Court of Pleas, a post that his father had formerly held. He held the office from 1848 to 1858 when he became a merchant in Asheville. In 1851 Vance married Harriet V. McElroy on May 13th and they went on to have six children. Only four children survived to adulthood, three boys and one girl. Vance reportedly held Unionist sympathies and was a supporter of John Bell, the presidential candidate who was a member of the Constitutional Union party. However, when the Civil War broke out Vance volunteered for the Confederate Army. He formed the Buncombe County Life Guard, which later changed its name to Company H of the 29th NC Infantry. After training at Camp Patton, Vance was chosen by his unit to be colonel. The unit went to guard the bridges in East Tennessee and in 1862 moved position to Cumberland Gap, where they entered into a battle on March 24th. On the 30th of December, 1862, Vance and his men were the first to join the battle of Murfreesboro, where sixty of them died and Vance barely missed being shot himself, his horse being shot out from under him. He received praise for his leadership at the battle and was promoted to brigadier-general by Jefferson Davis. Falling ill with typhoid fever, Vance was unable to work in the field until the summer of 1863. After he recovered he worked under General Braxton Bragg, who put him in charge of the North Carolina-Tennessee mountain region. This region had strong Union sympathies and Vance was supposed to harass the back of the Union Army and stop their flow of supplies. In January 1864 he and his men were able to capture a supply train heading for Knoxville, but when they tried to move the supplies they were captured at Crosby Creek. Vance and his men were put in Union prison camps in Nashville, Louisville, Fort Chase (Ohio), and Fort Delaware. While imprisoned Vance was let out on parole on the orders of President Lincoln and was given the job of purchasing clothing for the Confederate soldiers who were in prison camps. This situation came about through the efforts of Rev. Nathaniel Taylor, a Union sympathizer who had lived in Tennessee. When Vance occupied his home area Taylor had been afraid of capture. Vance, however, had given him protection papers. Taylor later fled to the North, but when he heard that Vance was captured he contacted Lincoln and told his story. Lincoln was sympathetic and ordered the parole. On March 14th, 1865, Vance was given pardon and allowed to return home on the condition that he never fight again. Vance returned home and lived peacefully, continuing his mercantile business, and in 1872 he ran for a Congressional seat. He won the position and went on to hold six terms in office. While there he made it possible for mail to be delivered every day in every county that he was in charge of, and he made it possible for the French Broad River to be dragged from Brevard to Asheville so that trade could move more easily along it. He was a member of the Committee on Revolutionary Pensions for Veterans of the War of 1812, the Committee on Coinage, and the Committee on Patents. In the December of 1875 he was appointed Chairman of the Committee on Patents and remained chairman for four terms. Vance did not try to get re-elected in 1884 but instead was appointed by President Grover Cleveland to be the assistant commissioner of patents. Vance’s wife, Harriet, died on March 20th, 1885. After several years he married again to Lizzie R. Cook on December 15th, 1892. Vance retired from politics in 1896. During his life he was an accomplished poet and published several collections of his works. He had been a member of the Knights Templar and served two terms as the grand master of the North Carolina Masons (1868-69). He also founded the Asheville chapter of the Sons of Temperance. Vance died on November 28th, 1899 at his farm in Alexander, and he was buried in Asheville at Riverside Cemetery.
|
"He was born at his father's home on Reem's Creek on April 24, 1828, being about two years the senior of his brother, Zebulon Baird Vance (see profile). His father, being clerk of the court, desired to give him all the educational advantages that circumstances would allow, and he attended the country schools and had the careful training of his mother, who was...herself well educated and a woman of strong religious views....So early [Vance] ripened into excellent manhood, that when but twenty years of age he was elected clerk of the Court of Common Pleas and Quarter Sessions of Buncombe County and served in that capacity for eight years and then declined a re-election....On retiring from his office as clerk of the court, General Vance engaged in merchandising at Asheville, and occupied himself in his leisure moments in private study and in reading....He was an earnest and sincere Christian and a...member of the Methodist Church....His younger brother, Zebulon,...also settled in Asheville....They both were followers of Henry Clay in their political affiliations and were equally attached to the Union; but at the first call to arms in 1861, [Zebulon] raised his Rough and Ready Guards, [Robert] raised a company which subsequently became Co. H of the 29th Regiment, which was organized in the Summer of 1861 at Camp Patton and in Sept. 1861, Capt. Vance was unanimously elected its colonel....The following May Col. Vance was ill with typhoid fever at Shelbyville, and his distinguished action on the battlefield and his efficiency and competency at that time brought him his well-merited promotion as brigadier-general; but his illness continuing, he was not able to resume active service until the Summer of 1863, when he reported to Gen. Bragg for duty at Chickamauga. [Gen. Bragg] assigned him the duty of protecting the mountain region of East Tennessee and North Carolina, which was organized into a military district as a separate command. The front of two hundred miles in length, altogether mountainous, with neither railroad nor telegraphic communications, was being pressed by a vigilant and well-organized enemy, aided by the local population, bitterly antagonistic to the Confederate cause, yet Gen. Vance repulsed the repeated efforts of the Federal corps to break his line, and often assuming the offensive, assailed the flanks of the enemy in East Tennessee. On one of these movements to aid Gen. Longstreet, who was then facing Burnside in East Tennessee, Gen. Vance moved across the Smoky Mountains in very bad weather, taking his artillery down by hand because of the snow and ice and performed one of the most daring and successful feats of the war. Within five miles of Burnside's encampment, he captured a very large wagon train with its convoy, and notwithstanding an immediate pursuit by an overwhelming force, sought to bring the captured wagons across the mountain within the Confederate lines. A most exhaustive march followed, the fighting being continuous and desperate; but after a night passed of trying ordeal...a brigade of Federal mounted infantry recaptured the train and also captured Gen. Vance, together with his entire staff, except Col. Davidson. (1907. Ashe, Samuel. Biographical History of North Carolina...Vol. VI, pp.471, 472, 473.) "This unfortunate occurrence terminated the active service in the field of this brave Confederate. At first he was confined at Camp Chase and later at Fort Delaware. But while at Fort Delaware, by special direction of President Lincoln, he was released on parole and given freedom within the Federal lines to purchase clothing for the Confederate prisoners. This unusual incident is accounted for as occurring through the intercession of Rev. Nathaniel G. Taylor, a Union man who lived in Johnston County, Tennessee, a local preacher of eminence in the Methodist Episcopal Church....After that Gen. Vance, along with Gen. Beale, was actively employed in buying clothing for the Confederate prisoners, using such means as the Confederate authorities could furnish him and such voluntary contributions as persons at the North made him for the purpose. (1907. Ashe, Samuel. Biographical History of North Carolina...Vol. VI, p. 473, 474.) "On March 14, 1865, he was paroled to come South, but not exchanged, and did not re-enter active service during the war. (1907. Ashe, Samuel. Biographical History of North Carolina...Vol. VI, p. 474.) On the return of peace, he resumed his private business, which he successfully prosecuted until his death, being prudent and economical and careful in his dealings. (1907. Ashe, Samuel. Biographical History of North Carolina...Vol. VI, p. 474.) "...in 1872 he was brought forward by the people for Congress and was elected a representative in the same district which his uncle had represented and which prior to the war his brother had. (1907. Ashe, Samuel. Biographical History of North Carolina...Vol. VI, p. 474.) "...So acceptable were his services, that he was continued in Congress for twelve years, and at length, in 1884, when his nomination was contested by several, there was a deadlock, which he broke by voluntarily retiring from the contest. During his term in Congress he delivered many speeches that were of particular excellence, and upon his retirement in 1884 President Cleveland appointed him assistant commissioner of patents, he having served on the Committee on Patents in Congress and being particularly well fitted for the discharge of the duties of that position....As a speaker he was noted for his humor, pathos, and eloquence, rivaling his gifted brother in his humor and pathos, if not so witty or so strong as a political orator....His brother Zeb, who confessed to many failings, used to say that notwithstanding the palpable difference between the general and himself, he deserved the most credit for the general was born good. (1907. Ashe, Samuel. Biographical History of North Carolina...Vol. VI, p. 475.) "In 1887 Gen. Vance lost his first wife, and in 1892 he was again united in marriage to Miss Lizzie Cook, in whom he found a congenial spirit and with whom he lived...until his death on Nov. 28, 1899. (1907. Ashe, Samuel. Biographical History of North Carolina...Vol. VI, p. 476.) |
| Gen. Robert Brank Vance. ... When 21 years of age he was elected clerk of the county court, and reelected till 1858, when he retired voluntarily....He was elected to the 43d Congress in 1872, and thereafter till 1885. He succeeded in securing daily mails in every county in his district, and many money-order offices. He was appointed commissioner of patents in 1885, and obtained an appropriation for dredging the French Broad river between Brevard and Asheville, a small steamer having been operated there a short time in 1876. He was in the State Senate in 1893. He was a sincere Christian, and the most useful congressman who ever went from that district. He died at Alexander, ten miles below Asheville, Nov. 28, 1899. (1914. Arthur, John P. Western North Carolina, A History..., p.647.) |
|
Bibliography Arthur, John P. Western North Carolina, A History from 1730-1913. Asheville, NC: Edward Buncombe Chapter of the American Daughters of the Revolution, 1914 Ashe, Samuel, ed. Biographical History of North Carolina, Vol. 6. Greensboro, NC: Charles L. Van Noppen, 1905. Lanman, Charles. Biographical Annals of the Civil Government of the United States. During its first century; from original and official sources. Washington, DC: James Anglim, 1876. Reprint. Detroit: Gale Research, 1976. Powell, William S., ed. Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, Volume 1. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1979.
|
|