Salmon Creek: Seedbed of the Carolina Colony

The lowlands around Salmon Creek and the nearby Chowan River were among the first places in what became North Carolina to attract English settlers, and the region produced a remarkable concentration of early colonial power. Several governors of the Carolina colony, both during the proprietary period from sixteen sixty-three to seventeen twenty-nine and the royal period that followed, lived within a short distance of this spot. Eden House, the home of Governor Charles Eden, stood near the creek's mouth on the Chowan, and Nathaniel Batts, considered the first known permanent European settler of the Carolinas, lived close by in the sixteen fifties. The marker here calls this area the seedbed of the colony, and the evidence backs the claim.