Elizabethtown

… town and county seat, central Bladen County. Alt. 121. Est. 1773, chartered 1843, and inc. 1895. Named either for Queen Elizabeth I of England or for the sweetheart of Isaac Jones, on whose land the town was laid out. In the Battle of Elizabethtown, August 27, 1781, Whigs broke Tory power in Bladen County by driving them into Tory Hole, a deep ravine along the banks of Cape Fear River in the middle of the town.