Orton’s Historic Past 
“King” Roger Moore (whose impressive tomb is 
at the northern extreme of the Garden) established 
Orton Plantation in 1725. His brother Col. Maurice 
Moore had been granted the right to settle the low- 
er Cape Fear region for eminent services in pacify- 
ing various Indian tribes, and interested his brothers 
Roger and Nathaniel with a group of relatives and 
friends in this undertaking. Prior to this settlement, 
the Lords Proprietors in 1665 had so little success 
in settling the Cape Fear that they abandoned it in 
1667. From this time to the coming of the Moore 
expedition the southern end of the Cape Fear River 
was headquarters for notorious pirates, chief among 
whom was Steed Bonnet, the renegade English 
major. 
Orton (named for the ancestral home of the 
Moores in the Lake District of England) together 
with the town of Brunswick developed so rapidly 
that Gabriel Johnston was appointed Governor of 
North Carolina and for a while the town of Bruns- 
wick was his capitol. His arbitrary rule was bitterly 
contested by King Roger and the Moore faction to 
such an extent that King George of England once 
referred to them as “those pestiferous Moores,” 
George Moore, the son and successor of King Roger, 
earried on this Moore tradition and was one of the 
leaders in the first armed resistance to British rule 
in all the colonies. This is commemorated on the 
descriptive monument at the site of Governor Wil- 
liam Tryon’s first residence in North Carolina, now 
within the present boundary of Orton. 
During these years Orton Plantation became one 
of the most famous rice plantations on the lower 
Cape Fear. This section was the northern extreme 
of the rice empire and was famous for the super- 
iority of its product. Rice culture on the Atlantic 
coast was abandoned after the 19th Century. 
The history of the Lower Cape Fear Section is 
rich in stirring events, many of them occuring with- 
in the present boundaries of Orton or only a few 
miles distant. Roger Moore annihilated a band of 
Indians who burned his first home, the town of 
Brunswick was captured by Spanish privateers in 
1747, Lord Cornwallis raided Orton in 1781 on his 
journey up the river to occupy Wilmington, and last 
but not least, Fort Anderson (with the ruins of St. 
Philip’s Church as its center) was bombarded and 
captured by Federal forces in 1865, after the fall of 
famous Fort Fisher, just across the river. 
Orton house was spared the tate of many another 
fine home in the South, for its use by the northern 
troops as a smallpox hospital. For 15 years after 
the Civil War it was abandoned until purchase and 
restored by the family of its present owners. me 
A more detailed history of Orton and its surroundings 
is available. 
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