Copyright Notice: This content is from the North Carolina Gazetteer, edited by William S. Powell and Michael Hill. Copyright © 2010 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. For personal use and not for further distribution. Please submit permission requests for other use directly to the publisher.
This content is from the North Carolina Gazetteer, edited by William S. Powell and Michael Hill. Copyright © 2010 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. For personal use and not for further distribution. Please submit permission requests for other use directly to the publisher.
Some place names included in The North Carolina Gazetteer contain terms that are considered offensive.
"The North Carolina Gazetteer is a geographical dictionary in which an attempt has been made to list all of the geographic features of the state in one alphabet. It is current, and it is historical as well. Many features and places that no longer exist are included; many towns and counties for which plans were made but which never materialized are also included. Some names appearing on old maps may have been imaginary, but many of them also appear in this gazetteer.
Each entry is located according to the county in which it is found. I have not felt obliged to keep entries uniform. The altitude of a place, the date of incorporation of a city or town, may appear in the beginning of one entry and at the end of another. Some entries may appear more complete than others. I have included whatever information I could find. If there is no comment on the origin or meaning of a name, it is because the information was not available. In some cases, however, resort to an unabridged dictionary may suggest the meaning of many names."
--From The North Carolina Gazetteer, 1st edition, preface by William S. Powell
| Place | Description |
|---|---|
| Forks of Tar River |
See Washington. |
| North Fork Tar River |
rises in central Granville County and flows SW into Tar River. Appears as Heartline Creek on the Collet map, 1770. |
| Tar River |
rises in W central Person County and flows SE through Granville, Franklin, Nash, Edgecombe, and Pitt Counties to Beaufort County, where it becomes the Pamlico River. It is 179 mi. long. Appears on the Moseley map, 1733, apparently for the first time; previously known as Pampticough and other spellings of the modern Pamlico. There are many explanations of the origin of the name. It may be from an Indian word, Tau, meaning "river of health"; named for the Taw River in Devonshire, England; or named because of the tar produced in the counties through which it flows. |
