Moses Kirkland (1730-1787) was probably born about 1730, the son of Richard and Mary Kirkland of Prince William County, Virginia. In about 1753, Richard and Mary and their three children (Moses, Richard, and Ann) removed to South Carolina and settled in the Wateree River region of Craven County. When the backcountry judicial districts were established in 1769, this area became a part of the Camden District. Moses Kirkland's father died intestate in about 1772 and Moses, as the eldest son, inherited all of his father's real property.

By the beginning of the American Revolution, in 1775, Moses Kirkland was a prosperous planter owning a sawmill and many tracts of land, mostly in the Ninety-Six District. He was a Captain in the Royal Militia, serving under the overall command of Colonel Thomas Fletchall; he actively participated in the Whig-Tory confrontations that took place in the summer of 1775. In September 1775, he and his twelve year old son, Moses, Jr., eluded Whig forces and reached the house of the Royal Governor, Lord William Campbell in Charleston. From there he embarked for the British Province of East Florida. From thence he went to Boston and soon thereafter was in Virginia in the service of the Royal Governor, Lord Dunmore.

By 1777 we hear of him serving under British General Howe in New York. In April-May of 1777 he traveled to Florida carrying dispatches from Lord Howe. John Stuart, superintendent of the Indians, appointed Kirkland as deputy superintendent of Indians, on 22 May, 1777. In 1778, he went among the Indian tribes, distributing presents and endeavoring to persuade them to be loyal and to act in concert with the British. After his tour of the Indian Nations, he returned to St. Augustine, Florida in March 1778, where he developed a plan for the British reconquest of Georgia and South Carolina.

Sir Henry Clinton's military efforts in the South in 1779-1780 culminated in the capture of Charleston in May 1780. Moses Kirkland participated in the capture and, on 6 July 1780, was made a regimental commander in General Robert Cunningham's Loyalist Brigade of Ninety-Six District. Subsequently, he joined Colonel John Harris Cruger on the expedition for the relief of Colonel Thomas Brown at Augusta in the September. After the relief of Brown, he was put in command of the garrison at Augusta; later he seems to have settled for a time near Savannah.

At some point during the War Kirkland's first wife, Patience, seems to have died. After the evacuation of South Carolina by the British in December 1782, Moses sought refuge in Jamaica, where he settled in St. George’s parish and married his second wife, Catherine Bruce. His life was ended by drowning while on a voyage from the West Indies to England in December 1787. Richard Bruce Kirkland, his only son by his second marriage, was born in 1786 and became a planter in Jamaica.

Moses Kirkland's estates in South Carolina were confiscated and sold at public auction during the 1782 -1786 time frame.