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.

While the plantations provided the unifying focus of family life, each generation of Pettigrew men also participated in significant events beyond the local community. Charles Pettigrew served as an Anglican minister in Edenton, N.C., was the first bishop-elect of the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina, and participated in the initial efforts to organize the University of North Carolina. Ebenezer Pettigrew was a student in the first preparatory class of the new university, completing his education at the Edenton Academy in 1804. He also served in the North Carolina state senate, 1809-1810, and as a Whig congressman, 1835-1837. James Johnston Pettigrew, unlike his brothers, spent most of his life away from the family plantations--as a student in Hillsborough and Chapel Hill; mathematician at the National Observatory; student of law in Baltimore and Europe; lawyer in Charleston, S.C.; representative in the South Carolina assembly; and brigadier-general in the Confederate Army.

For more detailed biographical information, see the descriptions of materials in Series 1, which has been organized and described according to significant events in Pettigrew family history. Other sources of information about the Pettigrew family include:

Ducey, Mitchell F. The Pettigrews: Paternal Authority and Personality Development in a North Carolina Planter Clan. Master's Thesis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1979.

Lemmon, Sarah McCulloh. Parson Pettigrew of the "Old Church," 1744-1807. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1970.

Lemmon, Sarah McCulloh, ed. The Pettigrew Papers, 1685-1818, Vol. I. Raleigh: State Department of Archives and History, 1971.

Lemmon, Sarah McCulloh, ed. The Pettigrew Papers, 1819-1843, Vol. II. Raleigh: North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, 1988.

Wall, Bennett Harrison. Charles Pettigrew: A Study of an Early North Carolina Religious Leader and Planter. Master's thesis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1940.

Wall, Bennett Harrison. Ebenezer Pettigrew: An Economic Study of an Antebellum Planter. Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1947.

Wall, Bennett Harrison. The Founding of the Pettigrew Plantations. North Carolina Historical Review 27 (October 1950): 395-418.

Wilson, Clyde Norman, Jr. Carolina Cavalier: The Life of James Johnston Pettigrew. Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1971.

From the guide to the Pettigrew Family Papers, 1776-1926, (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.)