- Title
- North Carolina historical review [1950 : October]
-
-
- Date
- October 1950
-
-
- Place
- ["North Carolina, United States"]
-
North Carolina historical review [1950 : October]
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The North Carolina
Historical Review
Volume XXVII OCTOBER, 1950 Number 4
THE FOUNDING OF THE PETTIGREW PLANTATIONS
By Bennett H. Wall
During the post-Revolutionary War period the Reverend
Charles Pettigrew, famous Eden ton, North Carolina, religious
leader, found it difficult to support his family on the income from
his parish.1 As a result he was forced to turn to planting as a
means of support. Since he had only a limited knowledge of agri¬
cultural methods he learned by trial and error. Just when he first
became a landowner is not recorded nor is it known when he
came into possession of his first farm. There is reasonable doubt
that he owned any land prior to his marriage to Mary Blount
on October 29, 1778. By this marriage he acquired slave property,
some land in Tennessee, and some land near Edenton. After his
marriage he moved to a plantation near his wife’s ancestral home,
Mulberry Hill, and settled “on the north side of the road leading
down the Albemarle Sound and just across what was then
Blount’s Mill.”2 In 1779 he purchased lands in Tyrrell County,
near Lake Phelps.
Three of Charles Pettigrew’s parishioners, all leading citizens
of Edenton, Josiah Collins, Dr. Luther Dickinson, and Major
Nathaniel Allen, were land speculators and in order to develop
one of their ventures in the region southeast of Edenton they
organized the Lake Company. The Lake Company’s lands were
along the shores of Lake Phelps, which is in the peninsula, about
sixty miles long and forty miles wide, formed by Albemarle and
Pamlico sounds in North Carolina. Four-fifths of the region was
an immense swamp.3 The remainder was composed of narrow
1 A portion of the research on this study was made possible by a grant from the University
of Kentucky Research Fund Committee.
2 “Ebenezer Pettigrew Relates His Early Life,” August 4, 1842, Pettigrew Manuscripts,
Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Hereinafter cited
as Pettigrew MSS.
8 See William Battle Cobb and William Anderson Davis, Soil Survey of Tyrrell County
(United States Government, 1924), 839-858. (A map is attached.) Hereinafter cited as
Cobb and Davis, Soil Survey.
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