Meherrin Town: People of the River

Two and a half miles north of this marker, on the banks of the Meherrin River, stood the village of the Meherrin people from roughly sixteen eighty-five to seventeen twenty-seven. The Meherrin were an Iroquoian-speaking tribe, related to the Nottoway and Tuscarora, who had moved down from Virginia into present Hertford County around sixteen ninety-one. English colonists made first contact with them in sixteen fifty, and for decades relations were uneasy.

The Meherrin allied with the Tuscarora during the Tuscarora War of seventeen eleven to seventeen fifteen. By the seventeen twenties they were complaining to colonial authorities about settler encroachment, and the Council twice assigned them new land boundaries. It did little good.

By seventeen fifty-two, a missionary counted fewer than twenty Meherrin families remaining. The river that bears their name is their most lasting monument.