James Coor was a naval architect from England who became a resident of New Bern, North Carolina by 1737. A clerk of the county court from 1737 to 1742, Coor owned several enslaved people including Scip, an African American man charged with burglary in 1771. Later Coor represented Craven in the North Carolina Colonial Assembly from 1773 to 1775, in the North Carolina Provincial Congress from 1775 to 1776, and in the state senate from 1777 to 1787. Coor died sometime between 1795 and 1800.