Qualla: Hertford County, North Carolina

Hertford County, North Carolina: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit F. C. H. Bonwill, Public domain. In 1706, the Meherrin people moved south from Virginia after years of colonial encroachment and settled on a six-square-mile reservation near Parker's Ferry on the river that already carried their name. They had been pushed across a line drawn by Europeans, onto land abandoned by the Chowanoke who had themselves been pushed off it. The treaty of 1726 confirmed the reservation. It did not keep it. The county that grew up around them, ratified into existence on December 19, 1759, is still home to the Meherrin Indian Tribe, the descendants of that arrival - and to one of the highest concentrations of Democratic voters in North Carolina, a quirk rooted in a longer history that the official maps tend to ignore.

Image: F. C. H. Bonwill | Public domain

Hertford County, North Carolina: Two Rivers, One Floor

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit F. C. H. Bonwill, Public domain. Hertford County sits where the Meherrin and Chowan rivers braid through pine flats and cypress swamp at the western edge of what marketers now call the Inner Banks. Three hundred sixty square miles of mostly low ground, two percent of it open water, the rest forested and farmed. ...

Image: F. C. H. Bonwill | Public domain

Hertford County, North Carolina: The Day Winton Burned

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. Early in 1862, federal gunboats steamed up the Chowan River, looking to wreck the rail bridges north of Winton. Confederate artillery hidden along the bluffs caught them in an ambush and drove them back downriver. The next day the Federals returned, this time with infantry, lande...

Image: Nyttend | Public domain

Hertford County, North Carolina: The Free People of Color

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit F. C. H. Bonwill, Public domain. Long before emancipation, free Black families farmed, traded, and worshipped in pockets of Hertford County - some descended from Indigenous Meherrin ancestors, some from manumissions, some from people who had simply slipped through the cracks of an institution that depended on ab...

Image: F. C. H. Bonwill | Public domain

Hertford County, North Carolina: Quiet Land, Loud History

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Published by North Carolina Department of Conservation and Development, Public domain. Fly over Hertford on a clear morning and what you see is mostly woods. Stands of loblolly pine, brown winter fields broken by cypress sloughs, the dark water of the Chowan curling against the Bertie County line. Ahoskie, the largest town, sprawls in a grid around old rail yards a...

Image: Published by North Carolina Department of Conservation and Development | Public domain