American Medical Biographies/Brevard, Ephraim
Brevard, Ephraim (1750?–1783)
Ephraim Brevard, a North Carolina patriot of the American Revolution, reputed author of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, was descended from a French Huguenot who had gone from his native land to the north of Ireland, and thence to Maryland. The family settled in Mecklenburg, N. C., about 1740. Ephraim, the oldest of eight sons, had the misfortune in his boyhood to lose the sight of one eye, but this did not prevent his receiving a liberal education. He graduated at Princeton College in 1768, studied medicine, and settled as a physician at Charlotte, N. C. During the troubles preceding the Revolution several county meetings were held here, and at one, held May 31, 1775, Dr. Brevard was secretary, and prepared a series of twenty resolutions declaring the government heretofore existing now dissolved, branding as traitors those who should henceforth accept offices from the Crown, establishing a new administration for the county, and calling upon all the inhabitants of the country to unite in maintaining their rights. These resolutions were sent to the provincial congress and to the delegates from North Carolina then attending the Continental Congress at Philadelphia. They were printed on June 13, 1775, in the South Carolina Gazette in Charleston, copies of which were sent to London by the royal governors of both North Carolina and Georgia as indicating the desperate situation of affairs. Dr. Brevard and his seven brothers all served in the Revolutionary Army, and his mother's house was burned on this account by a detachment from Lord Cornwallis's army. When the Southern army was captured at Charleston, S. C., in May, 1780, Dr. Brevard became a prisoner.
When released, some months later, his health was so broken that he died at Charlotte in 1783. He was buried at Hopewell, but his grave was not marked.