Williamston & Martin County History

English colonists exploring their new homeland first found this spot on the Roanoke River that is now Williamston, the county seat. There was a village here as early as 1730. The first settlers are said to have moved from Bertie County to the south side of the Moratock (now Roanoke) River and located near the ruins of what had been a Tuscarora Indian village. The Tuscarora had left this site long before the white man ever came to the New World.

The locality was known to the Indians as "Squhawky" but it was called "Tar Landing" by the newcomers, as it gradually became the principal shipping point for the tar, pitch, turpentine and other forest products and meat produced in the area.

The settlement prospered and was designated the county seat when Martin County was chartered in March 1774. The new county was formed from parts of Halifax and Tyrrell Counties and was originally named for Josiah Martin, the last Royal Governor of North Carolina.

After the Revolutionary War, the people were about to change the name because of bitterness toward Martin. However, they decided to keep the name in honor of Alexander Martin, a state representative to the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention. He was also Governor of North Carolina from 1789 to 1792.

A little more than five years after Martin County was formed, during the Revolutionary War, the county seat became the first incorporated town in the county and was named "Williamston" in the charter granted at a session of the General Assembly held in Halifax during October and November 1779.

There are two versions of how the town got its name. One of them - based largely on hearsay and legend - is that the name was chosen in honor of a poor Irish weaver named "Dick" Williams, who was supposed to have settled in the area around the middle of the 18th Century. It is said he arrived with 75 cents in his pocket, but by hard work and strict economy, he managed to create a substantial fortune and became one of the most influential men in the colony. The other version is that the town was named in honor of Colonel William Williams, scion of a wealthy and distinguished family which owned large plantations in the northwestern part of the county prior to the Revolution.

The name "Williams" is prominently connected with the early history of the county. Colonel Williams' father, also named William Williams, migrated to the United States from Wales in the early 1700s and settled on the south bank of the Roanoke River in the upper end of the county, which at that time was in Edgecombe and was later a part of Halifax before it became Martin.

William Williams II was a delegate to the Hillsborough and Halifax conventions in 1776, was elected colonel of Martin County's militia when it was organized, and continued in that capacity until he was elected the county's first state senator in 1777. He resigned his military commission shortly afterwards and was succeeded as commanding officer of the county's militia by his nephew, Lt. Col. Whitmel Hill.