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

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Place Description
Ess-ee-daw

See Broad River.

Essex

town in SW Halifax County. Inc. 1891, but long inactive in municipal affairs. Prior to 1860 it was the center of a settlement of free blacks.

Essex Island

See Etacrewac.

Estatoe

community in S Mitchell County on Brushy Creek. Named for the daughter of an Indian chief.

Estatoe Path

S Transylvania County, trading route between settlements of Cherokee Indians and their town of Estatoe, now in South Carolina.

Estatoe River

See Toe River.

Estelle

community in NE Caswell County. A post office operated there during the approx. period 1880-1905.

Estes Branch

rises in N Swain County and flows SW into Indian Creek.

Etacrewac

appears on the White maps, 1585 and 1590, as an island that today would be bounded on the N by the community of Duck on the North Banks and on the S by a point on Bodie Island opposite Broad Creek Point on Roanoke Island, E Dare County. The name appears to have been Algonquian for "evergreen-ground." See also Bodie Island; North Banks. The Smith map, 1624, appears to apply the name Essex Island there.

Ether

community in NE Montgomery County. Known as Freeman's Cross Roads prior to the establishment of a post office there in 1888, when it was named by Dr. F. E. Asbury, local physician.