Robert Brent Drane was born in Prince Georges County, Maryland on January 9, 1797 [1800]. In his youth, Drane attended and graduated from Harvard College (1825) and was ordained an Episcopal minister (1827). In 1836, he moved to Wilmington, North Carolina where he served as rector until his death from yellow fever on October 14, 1862. He married Catherine Caroline Parker, of a prominent North Carolina family, in 1850.