Historic Orton 
Orton Plantation was established in 1725 by Roger Moore, a gentlemar 
of distinguished lineage from Goose Creek, South Carolina. His brother 
Colonel Maurice Moore, had attained such fame in North and Soutk 
Carolina as an Indian fighter and treaty maker that large grants were 
given him along the Cape Fear River by the Lords Proprietors, who, ai 
that time, ruled both the Carolinas. 
Colonel Moore had spent the last nine years of his career just before 
reaching the Cape Fear, in Albemarle County, North Carolina, and 
brought with him a number of prominent friends, who together with a 
party from South Carolina, led by Roger Moore and Nathaniel Moore, 
divided the Cape Fear from its mouth to beyond Wilmington. Many fine 
plantations were then established, but Orton is one of the few that remains 
intact. The Moores established the town of Brunswick, now within the 
boundaries of Orton, where several of the prominent settlers took up their 
abode, and in a few years it became the chief business center of the 
State. All that remains of it today are the impressive walls of St. Philip's 
Church and a number of interesting old graves. 
In 1749 Brunswick was captured by a Spanish expedition, but in three 
days the Cape Fear men drove them out and sank one of the three 
Spanish ships. An oil-painting taken from this ship still hangs in the 
vestry of St. James Church, Wilmington. ~ 
Still within the boundaries of Orton is the site 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 Orion and Cornelius Harnett 
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 raiding 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 after 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 abondoned 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 bombarded Fort Anderson so heavily that the Con- 
federates were forced to abandon it. Orton Plantation was then overrun 
with Federal troops, who spared the house because they needed it for 
a hospital. 
The Cape Fear section is the northernmost extreme of the ‘Low Coun- 
try,’ the great rice producing area from Colonial times to the end of 
the Nineteenth Century. It was the staple crop that built the fortunes 
of scores of famous plantations that line the banks of the Cape Fear, 
Santee and other famous Carolina rivers. 
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