Greenville and Pitt County Information: History

Over 1000 pages of Pitt County North Carolina history with hundreds of pictures. Includes history of: Pitt County Communities; Government; Flood of the Century; Personalities; Education; Historical Organizations and Events; Agriculture; Transportation; Human Interest; Once-Thriving Communities; Churches; Family Histories and much more.

Located along the Tar River in the eastern half of North Carolina, Greenville exists today as a thriving center of commerce, education, medicine, the arts, and quality living. Since its earliest days in the 1770s, the city has expanded in size and population with the arrival of the railroad, the popularity of tobacco, and the rise in education. Age covers a city with a patina of experience that is apparent in many aspects of Greenville. Such beauty is evident in the preservation of photographs and stories that pay homage to the city of yesteryear. Greenville is a celebration of the community's coming of age. The images within these pages reach over the horizon of memory and evoke the proud chapters in the city's history. The pictures speak of simpler days, hard work, buggy rides, a stick of candy, and people watching the trains come in. They recall the days when steamboats plied the Tar River and when the tobacco market was the most important time of year. Yet, this volume does not merely depict a vanished ghost; the subject lives on, surviving through renovated buildings, along streets that have simply evolved, and in the faces of the children and grandchildren who, as it turns out, are not so different from those captured in these scenes.

At the turn of the 20th century, Greenville was a small agricultural community located along the banks of the Tar River in eastern North Carolina. Most of the 2,600 residents were connected to the state's agricultural economy, growing cotton, tobacco, corn, and other crop staples. By the year 2000, however, Greenville had become an economically diverse city of more than 60,000. The explosion in the bright leaf tobacco industry, the establishment of a public university, the recruitment of new manufacturing interests, and the creation of a regional medical complex contributed to this growth. Greenville witnessed the effects of dramatic technological innovation, a devastating depression, two world wars, a civil rights revolution, and economic globalization. Greenville in the 20th Century explores the community's growth as the seat of Pitt County through historic images that span a century.

Blessed with lush, rural landscapes and small-town charm, Pitt County possesses a history that typifies the traditional Southern experience. Once a major cotton producer, the area farmers transformed their cotton harvests in the late 1880s into tobacco, still a cash crop today in the community. Just as Pitt County is a center for both farming and education today, this volume, with over 125 images, focuses on the importance of flue-cured tobacco and learning institutions, such as the East Carolina Teachers Training School, a predecessor of East Carolina University. Pitt County: Eastern Reflections is a visual tour into the county’s past, primarily the early twentieth century, when horse and buggy shared road space with the early automobile, when students of all ages studied in one-room schoolhouses across the countryside, and when the main streets were flooded with wagons full of cotton and tobacco on market days. You will meet early Pitt County families, relax on front-porch rocking chairs, watch parades pass by along downtown streets, and view beautiful homes and farms in communities like Greenville, Farmville, and Bethel.

Located in the history-rich heart of eastern North Carolina, Pitt County has been the stage for a colorful cast of characters and intriguing events that have filled the area’s past with larger-than-life-stories. With beginnings that stretch back nearly 250 years, Pitt County has been home to clairvoyants, tobacco tycoons, Civil War soldiers, and more than a few star-crossed lovers.