Biographies B
Robert Garland Brank
Robert Garland Brank, a clergyman, was born November 3, 1824, Muhlenberg County Kentucky, Greenville. Through his parents Ephraim M. and Mary (Campbell) Brank, he was of Scotch-Irish, English and Huguenot descent.
The father Ephraim participated in the battle of New Orleans under General Andrew Jackson. Ephraim was credited with firing the shot that killed the British General Pakenham, and thus decided the fortunes of the day.
Robert Brank while yet a boy, confessed Christ before men. His collegiate education was obtained at Centre College, Danville, Kentucky, from which he was graduated bachelor of arts, October 1, 1846. Entering immediately upon the study of law, within the short period of one year, he obtained a license to practice.
Just then, however convinced that he ought to preach the gospel, he gave himself to theological study, spending a year in the Presbyterian Seminary, then located at New Albany, Indiana, and a like period at Princeton, NJ. In 1849 he was licensed to preach by the presbytery of West Lexington, Kentucky, and after laboring three years in Woodford County he was ordained by the same presbytery to the full work of the ministry. He was soon called to the pastoral care of the Second Presbyterian Church in Lexington, Kentucky, where for nearly twenty years, during which importunate invitations to other fields were declined; he made full proof of his ministry in perfecting saints and winning souls.
In 1869 assured that duty called him to wider opportunities which St. Louis, Missouri offered he became pastor of the Central Church in this city, to which with rarest devotion he gave heart and mind, service and means, for a quarter of a century, when the master summoned him home to rest August 21, 1895.
Dr. Robert G. Brank was simple as a child, without ambition save to preach and live Christ. In his daily walk all hearts were drawn to him as the “beloved disciple”. In the pulpit which was his throne, he was a Boanerges. A noble commanding presence, a voice of singular sweetness and power, chaste rhetoric, convincing logic the fruit of careful study and wide reading, were tributary to the rare eloquence with which this ambassador of Christ proclaimed his Lord's message to the saved and to the lost.
Dr. Brank was united in marriage October 17, 1865 to Miss Ruth A. Smith, of Lexington, Kentucky, who with two sons and a daughter survive him, the daughter is the wife of the Rev. Dr. Thomas Cummins of Henderson, Kentucky.
Source: Hyde, William, and Howard L. Conard, eds. Encyclopedia of the History of St. Louis. Vol. 1. New York: Southern History, 1899. Page 216.
Contributed by Tamara Kincaide
Updated July 6, 2018