FIRST ON 3: Brunswick Town/Fort Anderson closed after vandals cause damage, steal money and artifacts

BRUNSWICK COUNTY, NC (WWAY) — A Brunswick County historic site will be closed at least a couple of days after a break-in overnight.

According to the Facebook page for the Brunswick Town/Fort Anderson State Historic Site, the break-in last night led to damage to the building, as well as the theft of donation money and artifacts.

The Brunswick County Sheriff’s Office said the site was broken into around 2 a.m. Sunday. Site manager Jim McKee said the suspect(s) cut the barbed wire from a section of fence, jumped it, and kicked in one of the glass doors to the main building. He said three civil war buttons were taken from an exhibit.

“There’s not a lot of written records, so a lot of the information we get is from the archaeology,” McKee said. “Those buttons give us the insight to the men who built this fort, who lived at this fort, who fought here, and who may have even died here.”

He added that one of the buttons is pretty rare while the other two are more common. The Sheriff’s Office incident report lists the value of each button at $150, but McKee said the true value is in how much someone would be willing to pay for them on the open market.

McKee said he plans to post photos of those buttons soon, in hopes that the public can keep an eye out for them.

“Whoever stole these things didn’t steal them from the site, they stole them from the citizens of North Carolina,” McKee said.

A Brunswick County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman says the agency is investigating the crime. The site hopes to reopen to Tuesday, according to the post.

The historic site is located along the Cape Fear River off NC 133 between Leland and Southport. Brunswick Town was a pre-revolutionary port destroyed by the British in 1776. Fort Anderson was built on top the old village site. It served as part of the Cape Fear River defenses below Wilmington before the fall of the Confederacy.