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Tarboro is a city located in Edgecombe County, North Carolina. It is part of the Rocky Mount, North Carolina Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of 2010, the town had a total population of 13,121. It is the county seat of Edgecombe County.〔(【引用サイトリンク】accessdate=2011-06-07 )〕 Tarboro is located in North Carolina's Inner Banks region. It has many historical churches, some dating back to the early 19th century. Historic Tarboro, North Carolina, was chartered by British colonists in 1760. Nestled in a bend of the Tar River, it was an important river port, the head of navigation on the Tar at the fall line of the Piedmont. As early as the 1730s, a small European-American community formed due to this natural asset, and its warehouse, customs office and other commercial concerns, together with a score of "plain and cheap" houses, made a bustling village. The locals were a scrappy bunch, and gave the early governors and their agents a hard time. Edgecombe County residents came down hard on the side of the American Revolution, many serving as officers in the Continental Army. One such was Thomas Blount (1759–1812), whose handsome plantation house "The Grove" has been restored and is open for tours on a daily basis. A very young officer, he was captured during the Revolution and sent to England as a prisoner of war. After his return to North Carolina, he participated in one of the largest merchant/shipping companies in late 18th-century America. "The Grove" was later owned by Colonel Louis Dicken Wilson (1789–1847), who served in the North Carolina Senate and fought in the Mexican-American War; and by Col. John Luther Bridgers (1821–1884), Commandant of Fort Macon in the American Civil War. The Civil War general, William Dorsey Pender, is buried in Calvary Churchyard in Tarboro. Pender was considered one of the most promising young generals in Lee's army when he was mortally wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg on July 2, 1863. He is memorialized in the name of Pender County, North Carolina, founded in 1875. His letters were published posthumously as ''The General to his Lady: The Civil War Letters of William Dorsey Pender to Fanny Pender'' (1965). == History == Created in 1760, Tarboro is the ninth-oldest incorporated town in North Carolina. Situated on the Tar River at the fall line in the Piedmont, the town served the area as an important colonial river port. It was a thriving trade center until the Civil War. Scholars believe that the area around Tarboro was settled by 1733, but Edward Moseley's map of that year indicates only Tuscarora Native Americans, an Iroquoian-language speaking group. By 1850, the area was widely known as "Tawboro,” a name attributed to ''Taw,'' the Tuscaroran word for "river of health.” Tarrburg, as the town was called on maps of 1770-75, was chartered November 30, 1760 as Tarborough by the General Assembly. In September of the same year, Joseph and Ester Howell deeded of their property to the Reverend James Moir, Lawrence Toole (a merchant), Captains Aquilla Sugg and Elisha Battle, and Benjamin Hart, Esquire, for five shillings and one peppercorn. As commissioners, these men laid out a town with lots not exceeding and streets not wider than , with 12 lots and a "common" set aside for public use. Lots were to be sold for two pounds, with the proceeds to be turned over to the Howells; however, full payment was not received for all of the 109 lots sold, and some were not sold for the 40 shillings price. After Halifax County was withdrawn from Edgecombe County in 1758-1759, the original county seat of Enfield was within Halifax. Tarboro officially became the county seat of Edgecombe in 1764. For four years the county government met in Redman's Field. The North Carolina State Legislature met here once in 1787 and again in 1987. President George Washington is known to have slept in Tarboro during a visit on his 1791 Southern tour. He is noted to have said of the town that it was "as good a salute as could be given with one piece of artillery.” According to the book, ''Edgecombe County: Twelve North Carolina Counties in 1810-1811'', by Dr Jeremiah Battle, the following is an 1810 account of the town: “Tarboro, the only town in the county, is handsomely situated on the south-west bank of Tar River, just above the mouth of Hendrick's Creek, in lat. 35 deg. 45 min. It is forty-eight miles west by north from Washington, thirty-six south of Halifax, eighty-three northwest of Newbern (Bern ), and sixty-eight east of Raleigh. It was laid off into lots in the year 1760. The streets are seventy-two feet wide, and cross each other at right angles, leaving squares of each. These squares being divided into lots of , makes every lot front or face two streets. “There are about fifty private houses in it; and generally from fifteen to twenty stores, a church, a jail, two warehouses, and a large Court House, which in the year 1785 was used for the sitting of the State Legislature. There are several good springs adjacent to the town, but for culinary purposes almost every person or family has a well; and some of these wells afford good water the greater part of the year. This place affords good encouragement to all industrious persons, particularly merchants of almost every description. Sixty or seventy merchants have had full employment here at one time. But such of them as have emigrated to this place have too soon found themselves in prosperous situations, and have betaken themselves to idleness and dissipation." Due to the development of cotton plantations worked by slave labor in the antebellum years, by the 1870s, Halifax and Edgecombe counties were among several in northeast North Carolina with majority-black populations. Before being disfranchised by the Democrats' passage in 1899 of a new state constitution that included discriminatory provisions, black citizens elected four African Americans to the US Congress from North Carolina's 2nd congressional district in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, as well as many blacks to local offices. Congressman George Henry White, a successful attorney, lived in Tarboro. After passage of the disfranchising constitution, he left the state, stating it was impossible for a black to be a man there. He became a successful banker in Washington, DC and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 provided for oversight and enforcement of the constitutional rights of African Americans to vote. They have since been able to participate again in political life in North Carolina. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Tarboro, North Carolina」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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