Pettigrew family.

Four generations of the Pettigrew family carved three plantations out of the swampy lands between Lake Phelps and the Scuppernong River in Washington and Tyrrell counties, N.C. While there were Pettigrew women who led productive and interesting lives, the family's history is dominated by fathers and sons. Starting out from Scotland, James Pettigrew (d. 1784) arrived in Pennsylvania, but soon moved on, first to Virginia, and then to Granville County, N.C. Ever restless, he continued his southward journey, finally settling in Charleston and the Abbeville district of South Carolina. In these regions, the Pettigrew family flourished. Around 1809, the family, in an effort to claim Huguenot origins, changed its name to Petigru, and, under this name, became prominent in Charleston society.

James's son Charles Pettigrew (1743-1807), however, did not choose to move south, and settled instead around Edenton, N.C. Charles established his branch of the family in eastern North Carolina near the end of the 18th century. His son Ebenezer Pettigrew (1783-1848) developed the plantations that were later passed on to Ebenezer's children: Charles Lockhart Pettigrew (1816-1873), William S. Pettigrew (1818-1900), James Johnston Pettigrew (1826-1863), Mary B. Pettigrew (d. 1887), and Anne B. S. Pettigrew (1830-1864). Although the daughters shared in this inheritance, they were seldom directly involved in managing the plantations. An exception was Jane Caroline North, a South Carolina Petigru cousin, who, upon her marriage to Charles Lockhart Pettigrew, assumed a central role in shepherding the family's fortunes. This marriage reunited the Pettigrew and Petigru branches of the family. In the years following the Civil War, family members tried to hold onto their patrimony, struggling to adjust to life in much-reduced circumstances. Free labor and other changes wrought by the war, however, defeated their efforts, and, by the end of the century, the family left the region.

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