Wilmington New Hanover North Carolina United States

Giovanni da Verrazano was reportedly the first European to observe the area around present Wilmington, North Carolina, including its present site in the early sixteenth century, but the city was not born until much later.

It was not until the 1720s that English colonists began settling in the area.

Wilmington can trace its beginnings to 1733, with the settlement of a new community on land owned by John Watson on the Cape Fear River, where the river forks into its northwest and northeast branches.

The settlement was first called "New Carthage," then "New Liverpool," but gradually had taken on the name of "New Town" or "Newton".

It was in Newton that Governor Gabriel Johnston soon after had established his provincial government for the North Carolina colony.

The town is in 1739/40 incorporated under a new name, Wilmington, in honor of Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington.

...Wilmington and ...

An observer in Wilmington, North Carolina reports to the Edinburgh newspaper Caledonian Mercury on February 5 that three ships have been seized by British men-of-war on the charge of carrying official documents without stamps.

The strict enforcement causes seven other ships to leave Wilmington for other ports.

The Pennsylvania Gazette reports that a British sloop outside of Wilmington, North Carolina, has seized a sloop sailing from Philadelphia and another sailing from Saint Christopher on the charge of carrying official documents without stamps.

In response, local residents threaten to burn a Royal Man-of-War attempting to deliver stamps to Wilmington, forcing the ship to return to the mouth of the Cape Fear River.

North Carolina's royal governor, Josiah Martin, with political and military tensions rising in the Thirteen Colonies in early 1775, had hoped to combine the recruiting of Scots settlers in the North Carolina interior with that of sympathetic former Regulators (a group originally opposed to corrupt colonial administration) and disaffected Loyalists in the coastal areas to build a large Loyalist force to counteract Patriot sympathies in the province.

His petition to London to recruit one thousand men had been rejected, but he has continued efforts to rally Loyalist support.

At about the same time, Scotsman Allan Maclean had successfully lobbied King George III for permission to recruit Loyalist Scots throughout North America.

In April, he had received royal permission to raise a regiment known as the Royal Highland Emigrants by recruiting retired Scottish soldiers living in North America.

One battalion was to be recruited in the northern provinces, including New York, Quebec and Nova Scotia, while a second battalion was to be raised in North Carolina and other southern provinces, where a large number of these soldiers had been given land.

After receiving his commissions from General Thomas Gage in June, Maclean had sent Donald MacLeod and Donald MacDonald, two veterans of the June 17 Battle of Bunker Hill, south to lead the recruitment drive there.

These recruiters are also aware that Allan MacDonald, husband of the famous Jacobite heroine Flora MacDonald, is already actively recruiting in North Carolina.

Their arrival at New Bern is cause for suspicion by members of North Carolina's Committee of Safety, but they have not been  arrested.

On January 3, 1776, Martin learns that an expedition of more than two thousand troops under the command of General Henry Clinton is planned for the southern colonies and that their arrival is expected in mid-February.

He sends word to the recruiters that he expects them to deliver recruits to the coast by February 15, and dispatches Alexander Maclean to Cross Creek (present-day Fayetteville) to coordinate activities in that area.

Mclean optimistically reports to Martin that he will raise and equip five thousand Regulators and a thousand Scots.

Word of the Cross Creek meeting had reached members of the Revolutionary North Carolina Provincial Congress a few days after it happened.

The colonies are broadly prosperous on the eve of the American Revolution.

Pursuant to resolutions of the Second Continental Congress, the provincial congress had raised the 1st North Carolina Regiment of the Continental Army in fall 1775, and given command to Colonel James Moore.

Local committees of safety in Wilmington and New Bern also have active militia organizations, led by Alexander Lillington and Richard Caswell respectively.

On February 15 the Patriot forces begin to mobilize.

Moore leads six hundred and fifty Continentals out of Wilmington with the objective of preventing the Loyalists from reaching the coast.

They camp on the southern shore of Rockfish Creek on February 15, about seven miles (eleven kilometers) from the Loyalist camp.

General MacDonald learns of their arrival, and sends Moore a copy of a proclamation issued by Governor Martin and a letter calling on the rebels to lay down their arms.

Moore responds with his own call that the Loyalists lay down their arms and support the cause of Congress.

In the meantime, Caswell leads eight hundred New Bern militiamen toward the area.

North Carolina Loyalists charge across Moore's Creek Bridge near Wilmington to attack what they mistakenly believe to be a small force of rebels.

Several loyalist leaders are killed in the ensuing battle.

The patriot victory virtually ends all British authority in the town.

Cornwallis faces a serious problem at Wilmington.

Instead of remaining in North Carolina, he determines to march into Virginia, justifying the move on the ground that until Virginia is reduced, he cannot firmly hold the more southerly states he has just overrun.

General Clinton will sharply criticize the decision as unmilitary, and as having been made contrary to his instructions.

The American naval schooner USS Enterprise, repaired at the Washington Navy Yard, had been recommissioned there in April 1811, then sailed for operations out of Savannah, Georgia and Charleston, South Carolina.

Returning to Washington on October 2, she had been hauled out of the water for extensive repairs and modifications: when she sailed again on May 20, 1812, she had been rerigged as a brig.

At sea when war was declared on Britain, she had cruised along the east coast during the first year of hostilities.

On September 5, 1813, Enterprise had sighted and chased the brig HMS Boxer.

The brigs had opened fire on each other, and in a closely fought, fierce and gallant action which took the lives of both commanding officers, Enterprise captured Boxer and took her into nearby Portland, Maine, with Edward McCall in command.

Here a common funeral was held for Lieutenant William Burrows, Enterprise, and Captain Samuel Blyth, Boxer, both well-known and highly regarded in their respective naval services.

After repairing at Portland, Enterprise sailed in company with brig Rattlesnake, for the Caribbean.

The two ships took three prizes before being forced to separate by a heavily armed ship on February 25, 1814.

Enterprise had been compelled to jettison most of her guns in order to outsail her superior antagonist.

The brig reaches Wilmington, North Carolina, on March 9, 1814; she will pass the remainder of the war as a guardship off Charleston, South Carolina.

The Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad, chartered in 1834 in Wilmington, North Carolina, will begin operations in 1840 between Wilmington and Weldon, in North Carolina, United States.

With one hundred and sixty-one and a half miles of track, it will be said to be the longest railroad in the world at the time of its completion.

The name will be changed in 1855 to the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad; the line is one of the earliest ancestors of today's CSX Transportation.