Alexander Mebane Jr. was born on November 26, 1744, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, one of twelve children of Alexander Mebane Sr. and Mary Tinnin Mebane. The family was part of the large stream of settlers moving from Pennsylvania into the southern backcountry during the mid-eighteenth century. By 1754, when the elder Alexander received land in the Hawfields area of North Carolina, the family had relocated to what became Orange County.

Mebane grew up in a rural community of farms, congregations, mills, and trading roads rather than in one of the colony’s coastal towns. He attended local common schools in Orange County. Such instruction generally emphasized reading, writing, arithmetic, and practical civic or religious knowledge rather than the classical curriculum offered at colonial colleges. His education was sufficient for record keeping, property management, militia administration, and the public business he later undertook.

As one of many children, Alexander matured within a broad kinship network. The family’s land and local standing connected him to neighbors whose cooperation was essential in a thinly settled region. He learned the habits of farming and backcountry leadership at a time when Orange County was experiencing rapid population growth, disputes over fees and taxation, and the Regulator movement. The surviving biographical record does not establish that he played a prominent part in the Regulation, so his position in that conflict should not be inferred merely from residence.

Mebane married Mary Armstrong and established himself at Hawfields. By the opening of the Revolution he was a mature landholder with local influence. In 1775 he entered militia service, and in 1776 he represented his community in the North Carolina Provincial Congress. That same year he became a justice of the peace and received command as a colonel in the Orange County militia. These appointments mark the end of his early life: the Pennsylvania-born settler’s son had become a county leader prepared to combine military, judicial, and political responsibilities during the struggle for independence.