James Moore Sr.

James Moore Sr. (c. 1640 – c. 1706) was a military officer and colonial administrator who served as the governor of Carolina from 1700 to 1703. He is best known for leading several invasions of Spanish Florida during Queen Anne's War, including attacks in 1704 and 1706 which wiped out most of the Spanish missions in Florida. He captured and brought back to Carolina as slaves thousands of Apalachee.

James Moore was born c. 1640. It has been claimed that Moore was a son of Irish military officer Rory O'Moore, a leader of the Irish Rebellion of 1641, and that he had inherited his father's rebellious nature. However, Moore's official seal bore the swan and arms of the Moore family of Devonshire, suggesting his origins were English.

It appears Moore emigrated from England to Barbados, then eventually to mainland North America. He first appears in provincial records in 1675 representing Margaret Berringer Yeamans, widow of Sir John Yeamans, before the provincial council. At about the same time he married her daughter by her first husband, also named Margaret.

In 1677, 1682, and 1683, Moore served on the provincial council. He played a leading role in a 1690 expedition into the Carolina back country, crossing the Appalachians to investigate possibilities of trade with the local Indian population. In 1698 he was elected to the provincial assembly, and was described as the right-hand-man of proprietor Sir John Colleton. The next year he was named chief justice of the province, a post he held until he was named governor in 1700, replacing the deceased Joseph Blake.

Moore was a leader of one of Carolina's political factions, called the "Goose Creek Men", after Goose Creek, an outlying area of Charleston.

In 1683, Moore was granted 2,400 acres (970 ha) by the lords proprietor. He called his estate "Boochowee". Part of this land is known today as Liberty Hall Plantation.

From 1691, Moore was the acknowledged leader of the Goose Creek Men, the main political opposition to the ruling "Dissenter" faction. Moore's rise to governorship in 1700 signalled a major shift in the politics of the province. The Dissenters contested Moore's "unjust election". But the lords proprietor saw to it that Moore remained governor, and they made it clear that the Dissenters were no longer in favor.

Between 1700 and 1703, Moore was the governor of Carolina, which was then in the process of dividing into the provinces of North and South Carolina. During this period, he led a number of attacks from the Carolinas into Spanish Florida. He relied on allied Indian tribes, especially the Yamasee for most of his military force. On news of the outbreak of Queen Anne's War in 1702, he led 500 colonists, 300 native allies, and 14 small ships on an invasion of Spanish Florida along the coast, destroying the remaining Spanish missionary Indians of Guale and Mocama, and devastating the lands around St. Augustine. While the town of St. Augustine was razed, its central fortress, Castillo de San Marcos, where the Spanish and numerous allied Indians had taken refuge, resisted Moore's siege. The 1702 campaign was viewed as a disaster due to the failure to take the fortress and the expenses incurred, and Moore resigned his post.