Edward Buncombe

Edward Buncombe (1742–1778) was a plantation owner from the Province of North Carolina who served as a colonel in the North Carolina militia and Continental Army (the army of the Patriot side) in the American Revolutionary War. He is the namesake of Buncombe County in western North Carolina. In 1820, his surname (in its status as the name of that county) became the source of the derogatory American slang term, "bunkum" and its shortened form, "bunk" in consequence of the U.S. representative for the county, Felix Walker, invoking the county during a poorly received speech delivered on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Biography Buncombe was born in 1742 on the West Indies island of St. Christopher (today St. Kitts). He grew up there and in England. He immigrated to North Carolina in 1768 and settled at a plantation he had inherited In 1774, as the independence movement of the Thirteen Colonies gathered steam, he took a leading role in convening proindependence meetings, especially the First Provincial Congress,

Service record: Colonel Tyrrell County Regiment, North Carolina militia (1771-1775) 4/15/1776 until his death in May 1778, Colonel of the 5th North Carolina Regiment 10/4/1777, captured at Germantown, POW in Philadelphia, paroled May 1778, fell down a flight of stairs, reopened old wounds, died as a result.

He was appointed first colonel of the newly formed Tyrrell County Regiment of the North Carolina militia in 1771. The "Halifax Assembly" elected him colonel of the 5th North Carolina Regiment of the Continental Army on April 15, 1776

Tax records of 1782 say that his estate included of land and 10 Negroes.

In 1791, the State of North Carolina created a new county from parts of two other counties and named it for Col. Buncombe. The present Buncombe County is a combination of parts of the original one with parts of neighboring counties.