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Winton Triangle is a tri-racial landowning community of people of color dating back to the1740’s. It is located in central Hertford County in northeastern North Carolina. The community’s lands transverse the triangle formed by the roads that connect the towns of Winton, Ahoskie (US13) and Cofield.
The earliest known people of the Winton Triangle were the Choanoac or Chowanoke Indians, an Algonquian-language people whom the English Roanoke Island expeditions contacted in 1586. The Chowanoke populations declined after the contact period and neighboring Meherrin and Tuscarora migrated along the Meherrin River and Potecasi creek areas. In the 1740’s the first landowning settlers of color from the Chesapeake Bay areas purchased land along the Potecasi and Chinquipin creeks. Most of these settlers were of American Indian, European and African descent. Some of their children and grandchildren served in the Revolutionary War.
By the mid 1800’s, the free people of color of the Winton Triangle had formed the sub-communities of Little California, Pleasant Plains, Oak Villa and Archertown with family connections of other free peoples of color in the surrounding counties of Gates, Bertie and Northampton.
In 1851, white leaders permitted the founding of Pleasant Plains Baptist Church, the first and oldest institution of the Winton Triangle. From Pleasant Plains Church, several schools, including the current C.S. Brown High School, was established. The first school teacher of Pleasant Plains Church School, William David Newsome, was also elected to the legislature.
Over twenty men from the broader community of free people of color served in the Union Army during the Civil War. One of these, Parker D. Robbins, served for two terms in the state legislature. As in the case of Robbins, many veterans provided leadership to the Winton Triangle and its surrounding area.
Despite increasing discrimination after the Reconstruction Period, rights gained after the Civil War allowed the people of the Winton Triangle to create other churches, extend education to ex-slaves across the region, open stores, and participate in the growth of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCU’s).
In the 20th century, the Winton Triangle people continued to expand property and business ownership; forged educational and political leadership while adhering to its historic values of community involvement and cohesiveness. In the 1970’s members of its Meherrin population re-asserted its identity and became a state-recognized tribe in the 1986. By 2005, the Winton Triangle families had reared four college presidents and over twelve physicians..
References
edit"The Leading Edge of Edges - The Tri-Racial People of the Winton Triangle", Carolina Genesis - Beyond the Color Line, Backintyme Publishing, Palm Coast, Florida; 2010, p.187.
Andrea Lee article “QUILTS,” The New Yorker, July 11, 1983, p. 47
"The Hottest Nine Miles on US Route 13", article in Color magazine,November, 1955.
External links
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