of Governor Tryon’s Palace. Here the Colonial 
Dames of North Carolina have erected a stone 
marker which commemorates the fact that on 
February 10, 1766 a body of armed patriots led 
by George Moore of Orton and Corneilus Har- 
nett of Wilmington demanded that none of the 
odious requirements of the “Stamp Act’ be 
enforced in this Province. 
Lord Cornwallis with eighteen ships sailed up 
the Cape Fear River in 1781 and landed a raid- 
ing party to punish the Moores and other 
patriots for their active leadership in fomenting 
the Revolution in these parts. The Cape Fear 
Minute Men met this party and atter a lively 
skirmish just behind St. Philip’s Church drove 
them off and took a few prisoners. This action 
took place on the shores of a shallow pond that 
is still known as “Liberty Pond.” 
During the Civil War, the abandoned town of 
Brunswick was used as a secondary fort to Fort 
Fisher. When the latter fell in 1865, and with 
it the last hope of the Confederacy, the Federal 
fleet sailed into the river and for two days bom- 
barded Fort Anderson so heavily that the Con- 
federates were forced to abandon it. Orton 
Plantation was then over-run with Federal 
troops, who spared the house because they 
needed it for a hospital. 
The Cape Fear section is the northernmost ex- 
treme of the ‘Low Country,” the great rice pro- 
ducing area from Colonial times to the end of 
the Nineteenth Century. It was the staple crop 
that built the fortunes of scores of famous plan- 
tations that line the banks of the Cape Fear, 
Santee and other famous Carolina rivers. 



