Warsaw, North Carolina

Warsaw in Duplin County got its unlikely name from a book about a Polish general. In eighteen thirty-eight the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad was laid through the area and a small depot called Duplin Depot appeared, which was soon renamed Mooresville. Then a merchant named Thaddeus Love arrived to run the station.

At the time a popular novel by Jane Porter, Thaddeus of Warsaw, about a fictional Polish soldier who fought under the independence hero Tadeusz Kosciuszko, was circulating widely. The coincidence of Thaddeus Love's first name and the book's title gave Love a running nickname. The town soon adopted the name Warsaw in his honor.

Today Warsaw hosts what is claimed to be the nation's oldest continuously celebrated Veterans Day event, a fitting legacy for a town named after a hero of two revolutions.