Editor’s Note: Western North Carolina is rich with untold stories—many resting quietly in local cemeteries. In this Tombstone Tales series, we explore the lives of people from our region’s past whose legacies, whether widely known or nearly forgotten, helped shape the place we call home.

FLAT ROCK, N.C. (828newsNOW) – James Brown’s grave is situated in one of the most prominent places on the grounds of St. John in the Wilderness Episcopal Church.

The placement says something about his standing and his connection to the history of the church.

Brown was born Jan. 1, 1790, in Glasgow, Scotland. He served as a bugler in the Royal Scots Greys and rode at the Battle of Waterloo, the clash that ended Napoleon Bonaparte’s final campaign.

Waterloo unfolded in a single day of close, chaotic fighting that left tens of thousands dead or wounded. Brown rode with Captain Vernor’s troop, a cavalry regiment that charged directly into the fighting.

He survived.

A plaque beside James Brown’s grave identifies him as a member of the Royal Scots Greys who served in the Battle of Waterloo before his life in Flat Rock. Photo contributed by Shannon Ballard.

In the years that followed, Brown left Scotland and eventually crossed the Atlantic, making his way into the mountains of Western North Carolina. By the 1830s, he was living as part of the Baring household at Mountain Lodge, a community just beginning to take shape in the mountains.

Brown was part of the community that desired a new place of worship.

James Brown’s grave sits beside St. John in the Wilderness Episcopal Church in Flat Rock, enclosed in iron and placed close against the church wall where he was buried in 1840. Photo contributed by Shannon Ballard.

St. John in the Wilderness began as a chapel on the Baring property and grew into a parish in the 1830s. When Brown died in June of 1840, his grave was placed beside the church, close enough to the wall that it feels connected to the building.

He remained there until his remains were returned to Scotland.

His empty grave remains in Flat Rock, where it still holds the memory of a life that stretched from Glasgow to Waterloo to these mountains.