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 |
|---|---|
| Peggy Peak |
SW Buncombe County at the E end of Smathers View Mountain. |
| Pegries |
community in SW Richmond County served by post office, 1885-1904. |
| Pekin |
community in S Montgomery County. A post office, Chisholm's Store, est. there 1824, was renamed Pekin in 1853. |
| Peletier |
community in W Carteret County. Named for family of same name. |
| Peletier Creek |
rises in S Carteret County and flows S into Bogue Sound. Probably named for Jerome Peletier, first of the family to settle in the vicinity. |
| Pelham |
community in NW Caswell County. Est. during the Civil War as a station on the Piedmont Railroad; named for Maj. John Pelham, Alabamian killed in action during the war. Alt. 740. |
| Pelham Precinct |
appears on the Wimble map, 1738, between the Cape Fear and the Northeast Cape Fear Rivers at approx. what is now Pender County. Wimble's map was dedicated to Thomas Hollis Pelham, Duke of Newcastle (1693-1768), secretary of state for the Southern Department. Pelham County appears at the same location on the Mouzon map, 1775. Since there appears to be no reference to such a precinct or county in the records of North Carolina, it is possible that Wimble was simply flattering his patron and that Mouzon followed Wimble's map in making his own. |
| Pelham Township |
NW Caswell County. |
| Pell Mell Pocosin |
N central Bertie County. |
| Pembroke |
town in W central Robeson County. Alt. 172. Inc. 1895. Originally called Campbell's Mill on Waterhole Swamp; later, Scuffletown, after Scoville Town in England or because it was a good place to get into a fight. Today, it is center of Lumbee Indian business and social life. Named for Pembroke Jones (1825-1910), an official of the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad, which intersected the Wilmington, Charlotte, and Rutherford Railroad there. Home of the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, founded in 1887. |
