Biography
Robert Rowan was born to Scotch-Irish parents in 1740, the nephew of later acting governor Matthew Rowan. Details of his childhood, including his parent’s names, birthplace, and upbringing, are unknown.1 There likely was an older Robert Rowan in the colony, possibly his uncle, who bought 600 acres in the western part of the colony when this Robert was 16,2 and was named a Bladen County justice of the peace two years later.3 Regardless, in 1762 this Robert served as a militia lieutenant in the French and Indian War.4
In 1766 Rowan married young widow Susannah Greer in Cumberland County, carved from Bladen. They owned a plantation, Hollybrook, on the Cape Fear and a “townhome” in Cross Creek (now Fayetteville). He served as the second sheriff of Cumberland starting in 1770, but also joined the Cape Fear Sons of Liberty that year.
Rowan led the adoption of the 1775 Liberty Point Resolves in Cross Creek, a self-defense pact against British actions. He was elected to the second and third provincial congresses that year, and joined the 1st N.C. Regiment of the Continental Army as a captain when it formed that Fall.5 But he returned to this area, because the next February, he created a company of volunteers that joined a Patriot force at Rockfish Creek to block the passage of