Moorefields

Moorefields, HABS photo 1965.

Below taken from https://moorefields.org/history/

Moorefields was built in 1785 as a summer home by Alfred Moore, a military and educational leader and prominent jurist who ultimately served as the second and last North Carolinian on the United States Supreme Court.

Moore, born in 1755, served as a captain in the First North Carolina Regiment and later in the coastal militia during the Revolution. As a founder of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the nation’s first public university to enroll students, Moore was a leader in early public education in the United States. Most notably, he served as an Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Marshall.

Hillsborough was a center of North Carolina government and commerce, and Moore the state attorney general, when Moorefields was constructed. To reach the Orange County seat in what was then considered the state’s western reaches, Moore traveled a week by wagon from Buchoi, his manor house south of Wilmington, North Carolina. According to legend the Moores fled to the modest Occoneechee Mountains from May until the third hard frost, usually in late October, to escape the heat, mosquitos, and disease of the coast.

The house at Moorefields is located three miles from the court house in Hillsborough (five miles by modern road) and strategically situated upon one of the highest points in central Orange County, where in summer it catches the prevailing southwest breeze. Shade was provided by 50 white oaks planted around the house when it was built. The last of the grove fell during Hurricane Fran in September 1996.

The Moorefields site came into European hands when Colonel John Gray received a 500-acre land grant from Lord Granville on March 25, 1752, half a year before Orange County was formed and two years before Hillsborough was founded.

On September 9 of that year Grayfields, as the plantation was called,was the site of the first session of a Court of Common Pleas and Quarters Sessions held in Orange County. Orange was the most populous county in the west and so large it stretched to the Virginia border and included the present Caswell, Person, Chatham, and Alamance counties as well as parts of Durham, Guilford, Lee, Randolph, Rockingham, and Wake.

The Regulators, protestors against what they considered corrupt,distant government and arbitrary taxation, organized in Hillsborough in 1768. Three years later they fought and lost the battle of Alamance against colonial troops under the command of Governor William Tryon. Alfred Moore served as a lieutenant in Tryon’s service at the battle. Later Moore’s father, Maurice Moore, was the presiding judge in the trial that resulted in the hanging of six Regulators in Hillsborough on June 9, 1771.

The Moores were a prominent coastal family that included the first governors of South Carolina and the founders in 1725 of Old Brunswick, the first permanent English settlement on the Cape Fear River, located 13 miles south of Wilmington. Up the road from the state historic site stands Orton Plantation, built by “King” Roger Moore, whose brother was Alfred Moore’s grandfather. Orton is the last survivor of 66 manor houses built in the area during colonial times, including a plantation named “Moorefields” located north of present-day Wilmington.

Alfred Moore, born on May 21, 1755, read for the law under his father. At age 20 he was appointed a captain in the First North Carolina Regiment under the command of James Moore, his father’s brother. The relatives fought the Tories at the Battle of Moore’s Creek in February 1776, a major early victory for Colonial troops. Along that day was Col. Francis Nash, Alfred Moore’s brother-in-law. Nash, who died in combat the following year, is the man for whom Nashville, capital of Tennessee, is named.

Moore resigned his Continental commission after his father and uncle both died of disease on January 15, 1777. He remained on the coast and continued to disrupt Tory operations as a guerrilla colonel. British Major James Craig, later governor of Canada, offered Moore amnesty and restoration of his property upon condition he lay down his arms. Moore refused, and his home place was razed.

Moore became a state senator from Brunswick County in 1782, a year after Gen. Comwallis’ surrender at Yorktown effectively ended hostilities in the Revolutionary War. Moore was named attorney general in 1783, replacing James Iredell, for whom lredell County (Statesville) is named.Junius Davis, in an 1899 speech dedicating Moore’s portrait in the chambers of the North Carolina Supreme Court, described him as “small in stature, scarce five feet four inches in height, neat in dress, graceful in manner, but frail of body”. Davis also ascribed to Moore “a dark, singularly penetrating eye, a clear sonorous voice” and “a keen sense of humor, a brilliant wit, a biting tongue, a masterful logic (that) made him an adversary at the bar to be feared.”

He acquired Gray’s property near Hillsborough in 1785. One  year earlier,  a county had been cut from Cumberland County, and named Moore County in his honor.  Alfred Moore  renamed the site “Moorefields,” and over the years amassed 1,202 acres. Moorefields was a mile and three-quarters at its widest and more than tw omiles from north to south.

While spending summers in Orange County, Alfred Moore became a founder and benefactor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He served on the board of trustees from 1789, when the university was established, through 1797.

Moore was among those who selected the site at which the state of North Carolina established the first public university to open its doors in the United States. He helped prepare a bill for prohibition of distillation or retailing of spiritous liquors within two miles of the school, and served on a committee that chose the device for the seal of the university corporation. While seeking to encourage subscriptions to the university in 1793, Moore was among its largest benefactors, contributing $200 and a pair of globes,the first apparatus for instruction presented to the institution of higher learning.

Meanwhile, in 1792 Moore, a Federalist, returned to legislative office, winning election to the state House of Commons. Two years later, at a time when state legislatures chose U.S. Senators, he was defeated by a single vote in seeking that office. Moore became a Superior Court judge in 1798 and the next year was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court by President John Adams.

Moore became an Associate Justice, again succeeding Iredell, in August 1800. He retired in Febuary 1804. During Moore’s brief tenure the U.S. Supreme Court decided Marbury v. Madison, the case that established the doctrine of judicial review, asserting the right of American courts to overturn legislation deemed to violate the U.S. Constitution. Moore did not participate in the decision.

Moore died at age 55 on October 15, 1810 at Belfont, his daughter’s home in Bladen County in eastern North Carolina. His son Alfred Moore, at one time the Speaker of the N.C. House, retained Moorefields and is buried in the family graveyard southwest of the house. So are two of Justice Moore’s daughters, Augusta W. Moore and Sara Louisa Moore.

Moore’s descendents included James Iredell Waddell, commander of the CSS Shenandoah, last Confederate warship to surrender to the Union, and Alfred Moore Waddell, a Congressman and later mayor of Wilmington, who was a central figure in a notable 1898 white race riot in that city.

The Moorefields property was divided into five sections in 1847 in accordance with the terms of Justice Moore’s will. The segment containing the house — bordered by Rocky Run to the east, Seven Mile Creek to the northwest, and Gray’s Creek to the west — stayed longest in the family, ultimately purchased in 1913 by Thomas and Louise Webb. Six years later they sold the property to Ada and June Ray.

The Rays sold their 157 acres on May 14, 1949 to Edward Thayer Draper-Savage. The new owner, a UNC French professor and noted artist,came upon Moorefields while looking for a place in the country where he might build a cinder block studio in which to do sculpture and painting. Only after purchasing Moorefields did Draper-Savage discover he was related by marriage to the Moores.

Draper-Savage, a Wilmington native who lived in Paris during the 1920s and early 1930s, removed most of the farm buildings at Moorefields and laid out formal gardens in the French style. Draper-Savage also extensively restored and preserved the house, and for his efforts in 1960 was awarded the prestigious Cannon Cup by the North Carolina Society for the Preservation of Antiquities.

The Historic American Building Survey described Moorefields, one of North Carolina’s earliest surviving examples of Federal style architecture, as “an elegant small rural manor house” and its Chinese Chippendale staircase the “most spectacular feature”. Reflecting the building’s historical and architectural significance, Moorefields was named to the National Register of Historic Places in April 1972.

The most notable alteration to the structure — essentially a high central core with flanking right-angle wings — was the enclosure of the porch connecting the wings on the north side. A canopy was added over the entrance. Draper-Savage also restored the shed roof to the front porch, then removed the front stairs. They were later restored.

The parlor with its 14-foot ceiling was originally used for meals, the smaller rooms in the wings as bedrooms. Each corner post of the parlor, or Great Hall, is comprised of a single tree trunk. Most flooring in the house  is the original heart-pine. The moldings, weatherboards, visible mantels and the western chimney are also original. Hand-hewn pegs and hand-wrought, rosehead nails were used in the contruction.

Draper-Savage died on February 15, 1978 and is buried west of the house with his cats. Upon his death the house and remaining 84 acres were conveyed to the Effie Draper Savage-Nellie Draper Dick Foundation for the Preservation of Moorefields. Named after Draper-Savage’s mother and her sister, the foundation is administered by the trust department of Sun Trust Bank and is dedicated to maintaining the house and grounds in perpetuity.The Friends of Mooreftelds serve as an advisory board to the foundation.

HABS, LOC, 1965

From Gardens of Old Hillsborough, 1971:

Eighteenth-century Moorefields stands among the remains of an oak grove as old as the house itself. Its builder, Justice Alfred Moore, was a University of North Carolina founder, trustee, and early supporter. On one occasion, when work on the house was going forward under the hands of the [...] carpenters, Justice Moore came over to make a suggestion to the head carpenter, Uncle Ben. The old man listened patiently and then replied in a tone of gentleness and indulgence, "My dear sweet Master, go back and read your book, you don't know nothing 'bout cairpenter."

At the entrance to Moorefields a white sign hangs from a post, announcing that this place is "Moorefields Wildlife Refuge" and that the date of its completion was the barely post-Revolutionary year of 1785.

Alfred Moore Waddell, a direct descendant of Justice Alfred Moore, through his book entitled "Some Memories of my Life," has given us a glimpse of how the old place looked in its earlier days. The house itself was surrounded by huge oaks, part of the fifty planted when the house was built. Now only four of these oaks survive.

On the west side of the house were large flower beds, giving a riot of color from roses, dahlias, lilacs and peonies, while in the corner stood tall sunflowers. In spring the beds were colorful with jonquils, narcissus, hyacinths, anti lilies of the valley. Box bushes and a large mimosa tree, together with dogwood along the edges of the woods, added their charm to the garden.

On the east side was a well-kept kitchen garden, and along its fence stood the bee hives, their inhabitants constantly attending to their own affairs.

At the bottom of the hill, under the shady oaks, was a busy little spring-branch, hurrying and singing on its way over the stones and pools. A little farther downstream was a rock-built dairy, a cool place for pats of butter and pans of milk and cream.

From the west side of the house it was nearly a mile to the woods encircling all sides. On the way, lay fields of grain and Indian corn, as well as cherry trees and plum thickets.

South of the house, and at some little distance towards the woods, lies the little family graveyard, resting place of Moores, Waddells, and Camerons, and also "Mammy Sue," beloved nurse of the Moore and Waddell families. Miss Sallie Moore, daughter of Justice Alfred Moore, and called by the family, "Aunt," took charge of the little graveyard, and is said to have kept it like a little park, beautifully cared for. She worked there almost every day and spent long hours. But one day she came back very quickly. Those at the house were surprised and asked what was the matter. "I met a snake," she said, "and he gave me such a disagreeable look that I came right back to the house."

When Guion Williams Waddell died in 1911, the time had come for the passing of Moorefields from the family. The place being sold, it passed through several hands until, in 1949, most fortunately, Mr. Edward Thayer Draper-Savage bought the place, not knowing the surprise that awaited him. In conversation with former residents, he found that he could trace his own lineage back to the Moores through marriage. Thus, by the unwitting acquisition of "some land" which pleased him, the twentieth-century gentleman had restored ancestral property to the hands of kin. "Mr. Draper-Savage is responsible for rescuing Moorefields from degeneration, for saving this fine old home from the obscurity of use as an ordinary farm house, and the ultimate destiny of such occupation." The beautiful restoration Mr. Draper-Savage has accomplished, both inside and out, the formal gardens, the tall hedges, the lovely little Pet Cemetery, the interesting sculpture, and the beauty of the land itself, calls for happy thanks.

(Partially taken from an article about Moorefields by Betty Hodges published in the Durham Morning Herald, Sunday, March 18, 1962.)

09.19.15 (G. Kueber)

09.19.15 (G. Kueber)