Princeville

History

As the American Civil War reached its conclusion, formerly enslaved African Americans sought refuge at a temporary Union encampment south of Tarboro, North Carolina along the Tar River. With the assistance of the Freedmen's Bureau, these inhabitants developed their own makeshift settlement at the site and chose the name Freedom Hill in recognition of a small raised area where a Union soldier first announced the Emancipation Proclamation. The land on which they stayed was owned by two white planters, John Lloyd and Lafayette Dancy. There is no evidence that the two ever attempted to remove the freedmen from their properties, probably owing to the initial presence of federal troops and the poor quality of the land, which frequently flooded. The community suffered heavily from poverty during its early years, receiving limited federal aid until the Freedmen's Bureau withdrew from North Carolina in 1869. During the Reconstruction era, inheritors of Lloyd's parcel sold their property to planter Henry W. Shaw. Shaw began selling plots to the freedmen for low prices, though some residents continued to live as squatters. Black holdings grew near the Tar River bridge and more homes were built. Unlike most freedmen's towns in the Southern United States and in spite of its location in an agricultural region, Freedom Hill developed as a community with a workforce dominated by nonagricultural labor. The 1880 U.S. census recorded 379 inhabitants of whom only 12 were farmers and 43 were farmhands, with the remainder working in various trades including day laboring, laundering, seamstressing, carpentry, and blacksmithing. By that point community had also several white residents, most of whom were sharecroppers. Little is known about the white population of the town, though evidence…

Geography

According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , of which is land and , or 0.69%, is water.

Race & ethnicity