  ocated on the south shore of Albemarle Sound, Tyrrell
County was formed in 1729 from Chowan, Bertie, Currituck and
Pasquotank counties.
Named for Sir John Tyrrell, one of the Lords
Proprietors of the Carolina colony. Tyrrell County's original boundaries originally
stretched westward from Roanoke Island to near present-day Tarboro,. In 1870
the territory was divided and resulted in what is now known as Tyrrell, Martin, Washington, and
Dare counties. Elizabethtown, later renamed Columbia, was established on the banks of
the Scuppernong River in 1793 and became the Tyrrell County seat in 1799. (Sharpe 1965: 2125-2128).
While
settlers from Virginia streamed southward into the Albemarle region during
the early eighteenth century, the development of Tyrrell County proceeded
slowly. The county is part the region's most extensive tract of low-lying,
poorly drained land that extends between Albemarle Sound and Pamlico Sound.
The swamp forest as well as vast wetlands of muck-peat, pocosins, and pines
restricted the penetration of the interior. Consequently, the county has
been one of the most isolated and sparsely populated parts of the state.
In 1840, there were 4,448 inhabitants in Tyrrell County. The population
peaked at 5,556 in 1960, and in 1990 fewer than 4,000 people resided within
its borders (Weeden 1990: 10-12).
Geography shaped the pattern of settlement which took place
first along the Albemarle shore and the Alligator River, defining the eastern and northern boundaries of the county.
The Secota villages of Mecopen along the Scuppernong River near present day
Columbia and Tramaskecoc on the Alligator River near Gum Neck were
shown on maps as early as 1585. Artifacts unearthed in fields, dense
woodlands, and along waterways testify to communities of inhabitants long
before that.
The first permanent white occupation probably
occurred about 1700 at Fort Landing, located near the mouth of the Alligator
River. Other families later occupied tracts along the Scuppernong River and
Kendrick Creek or ventured up the Alligator River and cleared lands along
the coves and creeks in the southeastern part of the county. This section
became characterized by modest farms, river landings, and hamlets – all
linked together by canals that facilitated farming and small-boat
transportation. Inland settlement took place later, as small farmers settled
along the edges of peat and muck bogs and on the ridges of high ground.
However, a great deal of the interior remained undeveloped until the
twentieth century when timber and pulpwood interests cut roads and drainage
canals through the swamplands.
The economy during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was
largely based on subsistence farming and fishing though the Albemarle Sound
and Alligator and Scuppernong rivers provided for the shipping of forest
assets, especially shingles and staves. These products were transported
across the sound to Edenton, the commercial center of the Albemarle region,
where they were exported abroad or the northern markets (Merrens 1964:
96-98). By the antebellum years, goods were regularly shipped up the
Pasquotank River to Elizabeth City where the Dismal Swamp Canal linked
Albemarle Sound to the port of Norfolk, Virginia.
Although small-scale agriculture marked the area in the colonial period,
this land also sustained a collection of large plantations. In 1736, the
first recorded deed in Tyrrell County was filed by Joseph Buncombe, a
planter from the West Indies, who bought 1,025 acres of high ground on
Kendrick Creek (in present-day Washington County) and erected a residence on
the tract (Davis 1963: 21). About 1766, his nephew Edward Buncombe built the
plantation seat of Buncombe Hall on the property. On the west side of the
Scuppernong River, in present-day Tyrrell County, the Spruill family, whose
patriarch was Dr. Godfrey Spruill, established Round About Plantation in the
early eighteenth century (Davis 1963: 22-23). No architectural evidence of
these early estates survives.
 By the late eighteenth century, the local planter class also included the
Collinses and Pettigrews. These families, using vast amounts of slave labor,
transformed the swamps bordering Lake Phelps into immense agricultural
estates. The Collinses established Somerset Plantation in what is today
Washington County, and in 1838-39, Josiah Collins III built the substantial
Greek Revival residence that still stands by the Lake shore. Adjacent to
Somerset, in Tyrrell County, the Reverend Charles Pettigrew established
Bonarva Plantation in 1779. Also known as Lake Plantation, Bonarva was
developed in the antebellum years by his son Ebenezor. In 1843-1844,
Ebenezor Pettigrew built the plantation seat of Magnolia north of Lake
Phelps along a stretch of the Bonarva canal. The unusual two-story, two-bay,
frame house featured an encircling shed-roofed porch and, tradition has it,
gargoyles along the cornice. The house no longer exists.
These lakeside plantations thrived in this thinly settled region of
swamplands and bog. With slave labor, canals were laboriously dug from Lake
Phelps to the Scuppernong River, a distance of six miles. the first canal
was completed at Somerset as early as 1787. Lands were drained and cleared,
and sawmill, grist mills, and shingle mills were constructed along the
canals. Shallow-draft boats plied the 20-foot-wide canals transporting the
forest products as well as rice, cotton, wheat, and corn to the Scuppernong
and then on to Edenton or Columbia for export. Canals associated with both
Somerset and Bonarva, including the Bonarva and Bee Tree canals in Tyrrell
County, survive essentially intact.
During the Civil War, Union forces occupied the Albemarle region
beginning with the surrender of Roanoke Island in 1862. Although Tyrrell
County saw little serious military action, the town of Columbia was
bombarded. As throughout much of North Carolina, the social and economic
ramifications of the war were profound. The Pettigrew and Collins estates
never recovered from the war and deteriorated into underutilized, subdivided
tenant farms. In 1930, the federal government acquired most of these
plantation tracts and launched the Scuppernong Farms Project, a short-lived
resettlement program for small farmers. This part of the county contains a
scattering of one-story, frame 1930s farmhouses that may represent this
federally sponsored project. In 1939, the State of North Carolina purchased
the plantation house at Somerset and a portion of Bonarva for Pettigrew
State Park.
The county seat of Columbia was laid off on the east side of the
Scuppernong River between 1793 and 1802. Primarily a fishing and trading
center before the Civil War, the town grew in the late nineteenth century as
a result of the expanding lumber industry. Between the 1880s and turn of the
century, the population of Columbia rose from 166 to 382, as lumber mills
appeared on the waterfront. The major employer was the Branning
Manufacturing Company of Edenton, which built a substantial planing mill at
the south end of town and laid a railroad spur into the rich timberlands. In
1908, the Norfolk and Southern Railway extended its tracks to Columbia, but
withdrew to Creswell in Washington County in 1948 (Davis 1963: 62; Pezzoni
1994).
The remainder of Tyrrell County developed slowly in the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, characterized by small, isolated farms and
commercial fishing operations. Farm tenantry led to a steady decline in the
average size of farms, which dropped from 127 acres in 1890 to only 67 acres
in 1940. Farmers raised corn, some cotton, livestock, and, increasingly,
Irish potatoes. By the late 1940s, Tyrrell County ranked as the number one
potato producer in the state (Davis 1963: 62).
The success of agriculture as well as the lumber and fishing industries
was made possible by advancements in transportation. In addition to the
Norfolk and Southern Railway, new, paved roads and bridges slowly improved
access to selected parts of the county. During the 1920s, U.S. Highway 64
was paved through the county and, in 1926, a bridge was built over the
Scuppernong River at the west end of Columbia's main street. N.C. Highway 94
was constructed across the heart of the county in 1933, linking Columbia
with Hyde County to the south. The discontinuation of rail service after
World War II was partially compensated for by a renewed road-building
campaign, and, in 1962, the monumental three-mile-long Lindsay C. Warren
Bridge was erected across the Alligator River to Dare County.
 In the 1970s, corporations such as First colony Farms purchased large
sections of Tyrrell and adjacent counties for agricultural use (Schoenbaum
1982: 112-115). The result was the systematic transformation of the natural
landscape on an unprecedented scale. A vast network of drainage ditches was
constructed and thousands of acres of swamp forests were drained and cleared
for row crops. Consequently, Tyrrell County is today not only one of the most
remote and sparsely populated areas of the state but also one of the most
recently transformed. Small, isolated, turn-of-the-century farmsteads and
agricultural communities, such as Gum Neck near the south end of the county,
stand in juxtaposition to enormous, flat tracts of recently cleared
farmland controlled by out-of-state interests.
Tyrrell County's wild
and remote nature may have contributed to its sparse population and light
development in the past. Today, however, abundant water, forests and
wildlife are recognized as some of its most valuable assets and are
helping to build a healthy, sustainable future for this beautiful part of
North Carolina. |
