nt Church in 1847,
attention was called to the fact that no monument of any kind marked
the grave of this eminent divine and patriot; whereupon, a voluntary
subscription was immediately made, and the necessary funds promptly
raised to build a suitable monument to his memory. Fortunately, Abijah
Alexander, then ninety years of age, was still living, a worthy
citizen, and long a member of Poplar Tent Church, who was present at
the burial of his beloved pastor, and who could point out the precise
spot of sepulture, near the centre of the old graveyard. The following
is a copy of the inscription over his grave:

"Beneath this marble are the mortal remains of the Rev.
Hezikiah J. Balch, first pastor of Poplar Tent congregation,
and one of the original members of Orange Presbytery. He was
licensed a preacher of the everlasting gospel, of the
Presbytery of Donegal in 1766, and rested from his labors
A.D. 1776; having been pastor of the united congregations of
Poplar Tent and Rocky River, about seven years. He was
distinguished as one of the Committee of Three who prepared
the Declaration of Independence, and his eloquence, the more
effectual from his acknowledged wisdom, purity of motive and
dignity of character, contributed much to the unanimous
adoption of that instrument on the 20th of May, 1775."

_Dr. Ephraim Brevard_, the reputed author of the Mecklenburg
Declaration of Independence, proclaimed on the 20th of May, 1775, was
born in Maryland in 1744. He came with his parents to North Carolina
when about four years old. He was the son of John Brevard, one of the
earliest settlers of Iredell, then Rowan, county, and of Huguenot
descent. At the conclusion of the Indian war in 1761, he and his
cousin, Adlai Osborne, were sent to a grammar school in Prince Edward
county, Va. About a year later, he returned to North Carolina and
attended a school of considerable notoriety in Iredell county,
conducted successively by Joseph Alexander, (a nephew of John McKnitt
Alexander) David Caldwell, then quite young, and Joel Benedict, from
the New England States. Adlai Osborne, Ephraim Brevard and Thomas
Reese (a brother of David Reese, one of the signers), graduated at
Princeton College in 1768, and greatly contributed by talents and
influence to the spread and maintenance of patriotic principles. Soon
after graduation, Ephraim Brevard commenced the study of medicine
under the