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 indicates whites and blacks lived in separate areas. In 1883 a school was established in the community. Several churches were also established, though available dates on their creation are not exact. Local black residents were also, like their black contemporaries elsewhere in the state, politically active throughout the remainder of the 19th century, with local
Robert S. Taylor serving as an Edgecombe County
justice of the peace and
William P. Mabson serving as a state legislator. Gradually both local blacks and the white population in Edgecombe County came to support the notion of
incorporating the community. The black residents of Freedom Hill sought the advantages of local political involvement and self-governance, while whites in the county preferred having blacks available nearby as a labor force but socially segregated from their communities. After several petitions from Edgecombe County residents, in February 1885 the
North Carolina General Assembly incorporated the community as the town of Princeville, named in honor of local carpenter Turner Prince. The incorporating act provided for the town to elect its own government and scheduled their election in May 1886. In the years following incorporation the town experienced increased commercial development as more locals established their own businesses. Most of the town's political leaders emerged from the mercantile class. Princeville hosted its own federal post office staffed by black postmasters from 1898 to 1909. Princeville faced challenges throughout the
Jim Crow era. In February 1997 the
North Carolina Local Government Commission assumed control over the town's finances, the first time it had ever taken over the finances of a municipality. The town also suffered continuing difficulties due to its low elevation and adjacency to the
Tar River. Princeville experienced severe flooding in September 1999 when
Cape Verde-type Hurricane Floyd pulled coffins from the cemetery and raised water levels to just below the height of rooftops and church steeples. The U.S.
Federal Emergency Management Agency offered to buy out all residences in the town, but municipal officials rejected the offer. As the town's population declined in wake of the natural disasters, its tax base shrunk and the county government assumed various responsibilities from the municipality, including authority over tax collection, policing, and water and sewer services. == Tourism ==