James Orr (1770–1816), a native of the Presbyterian, Scots-speaking village of Ballycarry in east Antrim, was virtually forgotten by the public for most of the last century, but in his own lifetime and for a period afterwards he was admired and respected as a leading Irish writer, particularly within the province of Ulster. During the turbulent 1790s Orr, who was a weaver by trade, first achieved fame, or notoriety, as a contributor to the United Irishmen's newspaper, the Northern Star, printed in Belfast. Politically radical, he was angry about the injustices he observed within Ireland, such as rural poverty, inequalities suffered by the Dissenting population among whom he had grown up, and humiliations endured by Catholics as a result of the Penal Laws. Committed to the Enlightenment ideals of liberty and democracy, he is known to have participated in the Rebellion of 1798 in the neighbor hood of Antrim as a supporter of Henry Joy McCracken.

After a period on the run in Ireland, for a time in the company of McCracken and James (Jemmy) Hope, Orr fled to America, probably to the neighbourhood of Philadelphia, for an interval of a few months. There a newspaper editor printed a sample of his verse, prefacing it with the first recorded, approving comment on his work: ‘We understand the present production is by James Orr, an humble weaver from the North of Ireland. We could wish that his writings were better known’.