Archeology Confirms Where the Battle of Moores Creek Bridge Was Fought

Moores Creek bridge, the approximate site of the battle. NPS photo.

On February 27, 1776, 19 miles north of Wilmington, North Carolina, Patriot and Loyalist forces fought one of the first clashes of the American Revolutionary War at what is now Moores Creek National Battlefield. The British had expected the march to be a simple opening move in a Loyalist campaign in the South. Instead, the Battle of Moores Creek Bridge strengthened the call for American independence.

For decades, though, archeologists could not find the battle on the ground. A metal detector survey carried out under a National Park Service compliance project, with park staff and local volunteers, changed that.

The battle

Political tension had been building in the North Carolina colony for years. The popularly elected assembly opposed Royal Governor Josiah Martin, while others backed British rule or stayed out of it.

With British commanders in the northern colonies preparing a major offensive, they also committed to a hurried campaign in the Carolinas, hoping that retaking the colony would rally Loyalists and dishearten their southern opponents.

• February 18, 1776: Governor Martin authorized Colonel Donald MacDonald to raise a Loyalist army of 1,600 Highlanders — recently emigrated Highland Scots — and march south to meet British troops coming by sea. The Patriots intercepted the governor's printed proclamation and gathered their own force: Colonel Richard Caswell's minutemen from New Bern and Colonel Alexander Lillington's Wilmington District Minutemen.
• February 25: Lillington's force reached Widow Elizabeth Moore's Creek, later called Moores Creek, first. On the east side of the creek, he and 150 Minutemen dug earthwork entrenchments.
• The next day: Caswell arrived with 800 more minutemen.
• February 27: The Loyalists found the bridge stripped of its planks and what was left of it greased. As the Highlanders picked their way across to bagpipes, drums and the cry "King George and broad swords," the Patriots opened fire with two cannons known as "Old Mother Covington and her daughter." Within a few minutes, more than 70 Loyalists were killed or wounded, and the Patriots had won the first decisive Patriot victory of the war.

Reenactors of the Wilmington Minutemen firing "Mother Covington." NPS photo.

A battlefield without artifacts

After the war the site was largely forgotten. An 1856 article in the Fayetteville Observer prompted local people to organize a commemoration of the battle's 80th anniversary, and the Revolutionary War centennial in 1876 renewed the effort. The protected ground grew slowly, but it was used mostly for recreation, and monuments, straight roads, formal flower beds and new buildings crowded in until the site was redesigned in the mid-1900s to look more as it did at the time of the battle.

Archeology kept coming up nearly empty:

The lack of finds led to a theory that the battle had not been fought within the park at all.

The 2011 metal detector survey

In December 2011, under the direction of NPS archeologists, park staff and volunteers ran a systematic metal detector survey to locate Lillington's forward camp and Caswell's entrenchments. The volunteers were experienced detectorists from the Eastern North Carolina Metal Detecting Association (ENCMDA), along with Boy Scout and Cub Scout troops and the Friends of the Park. Each ENCMDA member was paired with one or more Scouts, who used what they learned toward an Archeology Merit Badge.

Metal detector operators and Cub Scouts surveying the Moores Creek site. NPS photo.

Operators walked in a line about 3 m apart across the suspected battle, camp and entrenchment locations — a technique that had worked at Little Bighorn Battlefield and Horseshoe Bend National Military Park.

The team turned up plenty of later material: an ENCMDA member reported buffalo nickels and reproduction buttons from the 1800s and 1900s that had nothing to do with the battle. Testing at the Caswell earthworks, the Lillington earthworks and the bridge causeway recovered 300 items, such as iron nails and coins, most of which appeared to come from reenactments and recreation.

Two artifacts, however, clearly belonged to the battle:

• a button commemorating the marriage of King George III and Queen Charlotte in 1761, and
• a British halfpenny minted in 1738.

Musket balls, a coin from the 1700s and period buttons were also found 2 to 8 inches below the surface. A later survey around Patriots Hall, a community building, and within the Caswell entrenchments found a piece of lead shot that may be linked to the battle.

What it means

Few as they are, these finds are convincing evidence that the battle took place inside the recognized national battlefield. The park can be pointed to with confidence as a turning point in American history.

The Patriot win delayed a full British invasion of the South and encouraged the North Carolina Provisional Congress to pass the Halifax Resolves, which let the colony's delegates to the Continental Congress seek and vote for independence — the first colony to do so. Archeology has only begun to explore the site, and future digs may add much more.

Sources

• National Park Service: "Verifying North Carolina's Turn Toward Independence: Archeology at Moores Creek National Battlefield."
• Works it lists: Moores Creek National Battlefield: An Administrative History (1999) and Foundation Document (2012), National Park Service; memos from Michael Seibert and Amelia Jansen to the Southeast Archeological Center (January 2012 and June 2013).