Peter Brank

A Patriot of the American Revolution for NORTH CAROLINA (SOLDIER). DAR Ancestor # A013807

Buried October 9, 1780. There is no record of a burial, as he died in battle and the British held the field after the shooting stopped. The British recorded recovering two rebel bodies, but provided no record of what was done with them.

While family lore has always said Peter Brank died at the Battle of Kings Mountain, he actually died a few weeks prior when McDowell's troops skirmished with Major Patrick Ferguson's militia at Cane Creek, a lesser known engagement than one of the same name that occurred in the same time.

Two pension statements filed decades later by fellow rebels mention Peter by name, identifying him as having been killed September 12 in the brief skirmish.

Peter's wife, Rebecca, had been scalped in an Indian raid and was unable to raise their son, Robert Houston Brank. She (they?) put the boy with her sister and brother-in-law, who, incidentally, are the parents of North Carolina Civil Way Governor Zebulon Vance's father, meaning Peter Brank was Zeb Vance's uncle.

Rebecca married again, to another Revolutionary War rebel veteran, James Andrew Miller, and her grave is still identifiable (2019 timeframe) in Henderson County, North Carolina, though the small cemetery has been overgrown with towering hardwood trees and is scrunched in beside a modern housing development in the Rugby community near the French Broad River.

See these links for a story about the skirmish in which Peter died, the pension applications that name him, and a story about Rebecca's grave.

https://allthingsliberty.com/2018/08/skulking-shots-on-the-flank-th...

http://revwarapps.org/s32577.pdf

http://revwarapps.org/s6403.pdf

https://www.blueridgenow.com/news/20060417/graves-hold-county-history

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He died September 12, 1780, in a Revolutionary War skirmish serving with his neighbor, Charles McDowell, as the unit tried to ambush British commander Ferguson’s troops at Cane Creek, near the Rutherford-Burke line (in present McDowell county near the intersection of Highways 226 and 64).
Ferguson's advance party unwittingly selected the wrong approach road, and so "McDowell's trap" lost its effectiveness. When the two sides met there was a brief skirmish, with McDowell's guerillas eventually being scattered. Peter was killed there at Cane Creek.