Moores Creek / Fort Anderson
Moores Creek National Battlefield | Fort Anderson State Park | Oak Island | November 2022
For our one weekend in Wilmington, we wanted to get out of town and hit some of the historic sites neighboring the city. There was supposed to be a Veterans Day parade downtown, so we made an effort to get out of the city early. As fortune would have, the National Park Service began issuing their ‘Lifetime Veterans Pass’ today – so we thought it would make sense to visit the nearest NPS site at Moores Creek, just North of Wilmington. Unfortunately for us, the Park Rangers who could give us our pass…were at the Veteran’s Day parade we had just avoided. But we were still able to walk around the park and enjoy the foggy and damp morning.
Moore’s Creek Battlefield, or more accurately, the Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge, was an early engagement of the Revolutionary War between British-Scottish Loyalists and North Carolina revolutionaries. Like most of the states, there was a large ideological division between those Loyal to the Crown, and those seeking independence. In the case of North Carolina, these divisions started as early as 1771. Then, Governor William Tryon, who was already disliked for his construction of an opulent mansion in New Bern (nicknamed Tryon’s Palace), put down a popular uprising of rebels known as ‘The Regulators’ before accepting appointment as Governor of New York, passing the office of North Carolina Governor to Josiah Martin.
In the summer of 1775, after the War for Independence actually began at Lexington and Concord, popular uprisings occurred in New Bern prompting Governor Martin to flee Tryon’s Palace for Fort Johnson at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, South of Wilmington, leaving the Colony without effective government and in the hands of the ‘extra-legal’ congresses who passed various proclamations (such as the Mecklenburg Declaration) effectively declaring independence from the Crown.
Governor Martin, from the safety of a ship off the coast, tried to regain control of his colony by coordinating the organization of Loyalist forces and British military aid – expected to land in Wilmington by February 1776. Martin asked for Loyalists to organize and join the British soldiers near Wilmington. As many as 1500 Scottish Loyalists in the vicinity of Cross Creek (modern day Fayetteville) answered the call and started a March down the Cape Fear River. The North Carolinian patriots organized to check this movement and a regular regiment brought up by the Continental Congress left from New Bern, while a local militia headed North from Wilmington.
The Patriot forces worked hard to prevent the Scotts from crossing the Black River. At one such crossing the Scotts, finding their path blocked yet again, doubled back to a second crossing at Moore’s Creek Bridge. One of the North Carolina regiments, under command of militia leader and future first Governor of North Carolina, Richard Caswell, hurriedly set up a fake encampment on one side of the bridge before entrenching on the far side of the bridge out of view.
On February 27, 1776, the Scotts broke camp and, seeing an abandoned camp and retreating sentries, the Scotts led a broad sword charge yelling ‘King George and Broadswords!’ – before running straight into the musket fire of the waiting militia. Trapped between the bridge and the muskets, the Scotts quickly broke ranks and ran. And so ended the Battle of Moores Creek Bridge, and one of the last instances of a Highland Broadsword charge. The Scottish loss was so significant and demoralizing that even 5 years later when Cornwallis was fighting the Carolina Campaign against General Greene – the Scotts while still loyal to the Crown, refused to join the regulars.
Without effective support, and because of travel delays, the Regulars who were supposed to land in Wilmington were rerouted to invade South Carolina and participated in the failed assault of Sullivan’s Island and Fort Moultrie.
We enjoyed our walk around the site, with little reminders of our time exploring the Lowcountry sprinkled all around. Boardwalks over a swamp, Cypress trees and ‘knees,’ monuments, and live oak trees with Spanish moss swaying lightly in the wind. One reminder that we didn’t enjoy quite as much was the scent of ‘Lowcountry paper factory’ that we were hit with as soon as we opened our car doors!
From Moore’s Creek we headed South to the beach for lunch and more historic sites. Our target was to head out to Caswell Beach on the West side of the mouth of Cape Fear. We first drove out to the end of the beach and got out to see the Oak Island Lighthouse. It’s not the most scenic of lighthouses, but the views out to sea were nice. We walked the beach a bit before going out to the tip of the island in an effort to see Fort Caswell – a Civil War era fort – only to find that it’s been turned into a Christian Retreat center and wasn’t open to the public today. We drove back up through the country and grabbed bagels and chicken salad for an impromptu lunch at our final historic site for the day – Brunswick Town and Fort Anderson.
As the name suggests, this site is two distinct historic sites. The first, Brunswick Town, was a colonial site founded in 1726. It was one of the first towns in the Cape Fear region, a major economic Port, and even served as the home of Governor Tyron before he built his New Bern home. The town witnessed three wars, including a failed attack by two Spanish Privateers during the War for Jenkins Ear. Interestingly, one of those privateers sank in Cape Fear, and recently two cannons have been recovered from the wreck and are on display. When Governor Martin was hiding at Fort Johnson, rebels from Brunswick attacked Fort Johnson prompting Martin’s retreat to his ship off the coast. This prompted retaliation by Governor Martin and the town was burned. Because of the growing population at Wilmington and the movement of the Governor’s Mansion to New Bern, the town was never rebuilt and remained in ruin.
During the Civil War, a Fort (Fort Anderson) was built on top of the site of the old town as part of the Wilmington/Cape Fear defenses of which Fort Fisher was the primary defense. The Fort served its purpose well, but when Fisher fell in 1865, Anderson became obsolete and unable to prevent the capture of Wilmington.
The site reminded us of another aspect of Lowcountry adventures we used to enjoy: finding brick ruins of churches or other structures in the woods. We walked the loop trail which took us throughout the park, past the old town’s cellar holes, and around the fort walls. That day there was some sort of disc golf event happening so the area was crowded, and didn’t quite fit in with the aesthetic of the ruins, but we still enjoyed our visit.
We wrapped up our day with relaxing at the hotel, a long walk around downtown Wilmington, and eating pizza. It was a great day of exploring more of the history from the region and being reminded of what we enjoyed about the South!
