Princeville, NC

Princeville began in 1865 as Freedom Hill, a settlement of formerly enslaved people who stayed near a Union encampment on the south side of the Tar River below Tarboro. Turner Prince, a carpenter who lived there from the founding, gave the town its name when it incorporated in 1885. That origin makes Princeville a major Black history site in its own right: residents built an independent community, businesses, and civic life in a low-lying area across the river from Tarboro.

The Tar River is also the town's defining practical problem. Floods came repeatedly before the Princeville dike was built, and Hurricane Floyd overwhelmed the area in 1999; water rose 23 feet above some streets and took ten days to recede. Recovery, oral-history work, and preservation remain part of the town's civic story. Roads to Tarboro, the river, the dike, cemeteries, and town offices all belong to the same geography, so Princeville's history is inseparable from the floodplain where its founders chose to stay.