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54 <br /> United States Department of the Interior <br /> National Park Service/National Register of Historic Places Registration Form <br /> NPS Form 10-900 OMB Control No.1024-0018 <br /> Moorefields (Additional Documentation) Orange County, N.C. <br /> Name of Property County and State <br /> specific vegetation(i.e.,periwinkle and large yucca plants) associated with burials, and 4)changes <br /> in soil composition suggest that either the Cameron-Moore-Waddell cemetery extends beyond its <br /> present walls or an ancillary burial ground lies approximately 65 feet east of the current bounds.168 <br /> Furthermore,the ancillary burial area may be a possible enslaved African-American burial ground. <br /> However, this area almost entirely lies outside of Moorefields property on Orange County-owned <br /> and maintained land. <br /> Through these recent archaeological investigations, it is evident that Moorefields—and <br /> specifically the 9.15-acre proposed Moorefields Historic District—has been a source of data and <br /> contains additional, as yet un-retrieved data that must be conserved for future study. The data that <br /> had been retrieved to date provides a little insight into the European-American community that <br /> inhabited Moorefields over the last two-and-a-half centuries. Continued research around the house <br /> may illuminate where enslaved African Americans dwelled and worked. For instance, the 1820 <br /> federal census recorded that seven of the 12 enslaved African Americans at Moorefields were <br /> engaged in agriculture and an undisclosed"commerce."Locating ancillary structures and artifacts <br /> associated with them may illuminate what sort of cottage industry, if any, was present on the <br /> Moorefields estate in the early antebellum period. <br /> Further archaeological research into both the curtilage around the house and the area immediately <br /> east of the Cameron-Moore-Waddell Cemetery(that portion owned by the Friends of Moorefields) <br /> could provide more information on the enslaved community at Moorefields in the first half of the <br /> 19th century, a community about which very little is presently known. For example, the 1840 <br /> census recorded 46 enslaved African Americans at Moorefields, while the 1850 census recorded <br /> five enslaved people.What accounts for this marked reduction in enslaved persons at Moorefields? <br /> Is it simply explained by manumission or self-liberation? If additional burials were located and <br /> identified east of the present cemetery walls, and if research ascertained the likelihood of these <br /> burials belonging to enslaved African Americans, then this data alone could provide illumination <br /> into or corroborate the scale of the enslaved community at Moorefields and how it changed over <br /> time.All in all,furthering the research into where the enslaved community lived,worked, and died <br /> at Moorefields would provide a better understanding of the lifeways of historic African Americans <br /> on a Piedmont plantation in the first half of the 19th century. <br /> The proposed historic district retains its integrity in terms of location, setting, design, materials, <br /> workmanship, feeling and association. Therefore, Moorefields Historic District is eligible under <br /> Criterion D for its further potential to yield more information that elucidates the human occupation <br /> and activity on the property across several pre-Contact and post-Contact periods. <br /> Section 8 page 52 <br />