In public fora I like to see objects which make me remember great men and women. Statues of generals, diplomats and politicians abound in Washington, D.C.  Detroit commemorates its great captains and statesmen. 

Downtown Asheville, NC has an obelisk recalling U.S Senator Zebulon Baird Vance. But Asheville is not renowned for its monuments, is it? It lacks, for example, the contemporary painting of George Washington found in Charleston’s City Hall. Nor is Buncombe County what you might call  “monument country.”  There may well be a statue or a portrait of Warren Wilson somewhere on the campus of Warren Wilson College. But I have not found it and I have looked. In 1795 Samuel Ashe, Governor of North Carolina gave his name to Asheville. But where stands anything prominently visible in his city to remind us of this eastern politician? Historians do not even know where he is buried.

What about the man who gave his name to Buncombe County? I hope that he has a monument somewhere in our county. But if he does, I do not know where it is. Until a few days ago all I vaguely understood was that our county is named for a revolutionary war hero, Colonel Edward Buncombe, who, I thought, “fell at the Battle of Brandywine.” 

I then searched the internet and ran down the Tyrrell County Genealogical Society whose Teresa Kelley kindly referred me to  Edwin A. Norman, President of the Washington County Genealogical Society in Plymouth, NC. Washington County was carved out of the western part of Tyrrell County in 1799, seven years after the creation of Buncombe County. 

Edwin Norman kindly  sent me six pages on Tyrrell County’s Revolutionary War experience from the Washington County Genealogical Society JOURNAL for December 1996.  Edwin also enclosed two pages from William S. Powell’s A DICTIONARY OF NORTH CAROLINA BIOGRAPHY.Those pages convinced me that Edward Buncombe (1742-May 1778) is worth knowing about and deserves a statue.

Edward Buncombe was the second of four children born to the plantation family of Thomas and Esther Buncombe on the Caribbean island of St. Christopher (St. Kitts). His uncle Joseph willed to young Edward 1025 acres near Albemarle Sound in Tyrrell County, North Carolina. An Anglican, Edward had married Elizabeth Dawson Taylor on Saint Christopher in 1766. Around 1768 , when he was 26, he took up residence in Tyrrell County and erected his residence, Buncombe Hall, which stood about two miles north of the town of Roper (formerly Lee’s Mills) until at least the mid 1870s. He became noted for his hospitality, expanded Buncombe Hall plantation to four square miles and owned at least one trading vessel. Edward and Elizabeth had three children, the last two being born in North Carolina. He was appointed Justice of the Peace by the Royal Governor and supported Governor Tryon against the Regulators in 1771.

On April 4, 1774 Buncombe Hall hosted a meeting which called for the first assembly anywhere in the 13 colonies to defy a royal governor, held at New Bern on August 25, 1774.  At that point Edward had less than four years to live. In 1775 he was elected colonel of the regiment of the Tyrrell County militia. In April 1776 he and his men transferred to the Fifth Regiment of North Carolina Continentals. He served in the brigade of General Francis Nash. 

With his regiment Edward Buncombe fought in two battles for Philadelphia: at Brandywine Creek and Germantown. On October 4, 1777 he was severely wounded at Germantown and left for dead. An old school chum, now in the British army, recognized Edward and caused him to be taken to Philadelphia and to be paroled with the expectation of returning home through a prisoner exchange. But the Colonel had virtually bankrupted himself through personal expenses to raise and support his troops. He could not afford the best medical attention and was not yet fit to travel. He took to walking in his sleep and in May 1778 fell down a flight of stairs while in that unusual state. That fall reopened his wound and he bled to death. Tax records of 1782 say that his estate contained 2,250 acres of land and “10 Negroes.”

In 1776-77 Tories around Albemarle Sound had played a religious card against Colonel Edward Buncombe and other rebels preparing to join Washington’s Continental Line. Tory leaders used the efforts by the Continental Congress to secure an alliance with France to spread rumors that Congress and Colonel Buncombe were willing to establish Catholicism as the religion of the rebellious colonies in exchange for French military assistance. Britain was portrayed as the defender of the Protestant Faith.

In ASHEVILLE: LAND OF THE SKY, author Milton Ready says that the North Carolina Legislature in 1791 was preparing to name the new county “Union.” But residents David Vance and William Davidson prevailed upon the Legislators to call it “Buncombe County,” in honor of the friend with whom both had fought 14 years earlier at the Battle of Germantown.

As any good dictionary of English tells us, Edward Buncombe indirectly lent his name to a new English word: “buncombe,” which evolved into “bunkum” and “bunk.” In 1820, during the debates over the Missouri Compromise, Western North Carolina’s Representative in Congress, Felix Walker (1753-1828) was already known as “Old Oil Jug,” in reference to his tendency to talk on and on and on about subjects dear only to himself and his constituents. He was asked to yield the floor. But Walker declined, saying that he was not just addressing the House but primarily his Western Carolina constituents: a reality which bound him to “make a speech for Buncombe.” 

Thus was a phrase and then a word born: buncombe or bunk: meaning bombastic, sonorous political speech aimed at the galleries rather than at the decision makers. By 1828 “talking to Bunkum” was a popular expression in our Nation’s capital city and its popularity grew in the 1840s and 1850s.

Henry Ford, the automobile manufacturer, said and did many things: some great, some merely stupid, some (especially in support of antisemitism) downright odious. Henry Ford authored the saying “History is bunk.”  That is not a worthy way to remember Colonel Edward Buncombe who lived less than ten years on North Carolina soil and who was only 35 years old when he shed his blood in support of America’s independence. Yet I have met a fair number of people around Asheville who know the genesis and provenance of the word “bunk,” and who also know the saga of “Old Oil Jug,” Felix Walker. 

I have also met few people who know a thing or two about the generous, gallant hero who gave his name to Buncombe County. If someone passes the hat to commission a statue prominently displayed in Asheville to honor the memory of Colonel Edward Buncombe, I will be happy to contribute.  How about you? 

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for ASHEVILLE TRIBUNE