in 17^2, and Governor Pollock called upon South Carolina for aid, James Moore, the second, was selected to lead the men from South Carolina. With him, as an officer, went his younger brother, Maurice, to whom we owe the first permanent settlement of the Cape Fear country. Traversing this region on his toilsome march to the Neuse, and see ing the beauty of the land, the fertility of the soil, and the commercial advantages of the river and harbor, it is reasonable to presume that he then and there conceived the project which he afterwards successfully carried out. Lingering in North Carolina, a few years after the return of his brother to Charleston, long enough to marry one of her fair daughters, he returned to Charleston, and gathering about him the families of all his brothers and sisters (except his elder brother, James), and many of his friends, about the year 1723, for history leaves the exact time uncertain, he again struck into the wilderness, and settled them at and around Old Brunswick, on the west side of the Cape Fear river, about thirteen miles below Wilmington. And this was the first permanent settlement of the Cape Fear region. His two sons, Maurice and James, were eminent and distinguished men and ardent patriots. Maurice was one of the three Judges of the Province at the breaking out of the Revolution, and was "a learned jurist, an astute advocate, and a keen-sighted states man." James was a soldier and " considered the first military genius of the Province." He was Colonel of the First North Carolina Continental Regiment in September, 1775, and Brigadier General in March, 1776. Upon the departure of Lee for the North, in the summer of 1776, he was appointed by Con gress Commander-in-Chief of the Southern Department. But a few months after, how ever, his health failed, and he died in Wil mington on the 15th of January, 1777; and, on the same day, in the same house, died his brother Maurice, both "in the prime of life and in the meridian of their fame and usefulness."
In 1764, while yet a youth, Alfred Moore was sent to Boston to complete his education. Judge Taylor says that " on the arrival of the British troops there, in 1768, he attracted the notice of a Captain Fordyce, a man of fine taste and acquirements, who became much attached to the youth, and offered to procure him an ensigncy in the army. This he declined, but under the instructions of his friend he learned the elements of military sci ence, and furnished himself with a variety of knowledge which highly qualified him for that stormy period in which he was destined to live." On September i, 1775, while not yet of age, he was appointed a captain in the First North Carolina regiment, commanded by his uncle, James Moore. After participating in the short but brilliant campaign which re sulted in the total defeat and destruction of McDonald's Royalist Highlanders at Moore's Creek, in February, 1776, his regiment, then commanded by his brother-in-law, Colonel Francis Nash (Colonel James Moore having been tinental appointed line), was Brigadier ordered General to Charleston in the Con* to assist in the defense of that city against the threatened attack of the British under Sir Henry Clinton and Lord Cornwallis. With his company he bore his part in that memo rable attack on Fort Moultrie in June, 17/6, when the North Carolinians behaved with such gallantry as to draw from Charles Lee the eulogium : " I know not which corps I have the greatest reason to be pleased with, Muhlenburg's Virginians or the North Caro lina troops—they are both equally alert, zeal ous and spirited." And what higher testimony to the valor of the North Carolinians could we have than this, when a Virginian reckons them as equal to the best regiment Virginia had sent to the field! After the repulse of the British at Charleston, Moore's regiment was camped at Wilmington, where it was put through a rigid system of drill and dis cipline which gave it the efficiency that dis tinguished it in the later northern campaigns. In March, 1777, the regiment was ordered
