FIRST - Bishop-elect of Episcopal Church in N.C. - First of its Kind on Waymarking.com

Text on Marker:

B-29: Charles Pettigrew
First Bishop-elect of Episcopal Church in N.C., 1794. St. David's Church, erected 1803 at his expense, and his home are 1/2 mile southeast.

This historical marker is located on US 64 (old) in Cresswell. It was erected in 1951.

The following information is excerpted from Documenting The American South: Charles Pettigrew, which includes a brief biographical sketch of Pettigrew and links to purchase a book authored by him.

Charles Pettigrew (20 Mar. 1744-8 Apr. 1807), clergyman, planter, and educator, was born on the Pennsylvania frontier, the sixth of eleven children and the third son of James and Mary Cochran Pettigrew, both immigrants from Northern Ireland....

Charles Pettigrew remained behind in Granville County [North Carolina] when his parents moved to South Carolina in 1768. After teaching in a small school for the children of the Macons and the Hawkinses for about seven years, he was appointed by Governor Josiah Martin as schoolmaster at Edenton, an important colonial town. At this time Pettigrew became an Anglican. He served as assistant to the Reverend Daniel Earl at St. Paul's Church and in 1774 went to England, where he was ordained deacon and priest by the bishops of London and Rochester. He returned to Edenton on 20 May 1775.

As the waves of revolution broke over the state, Pettigrew became a moderate Patriot. He preached appropriate sermons to patriotic assemblages but was insufficiently fiery to appease the powerful Blount family, one member of whom seems to have arranged that he be drafted for military service in spite of his clerical standing. Pettigrew served for a few weeks in the spring of 1780 and was then able to secure his release by "having produced Zachariah Carter an able bodied man in his Room." During the war, he was named rector of St. Paul's Church, with which he continued to be loosely affiliated until his death. From 1790 to 1794 he participated in a movement to organize the former Anglican church into the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina, promoting together with the Reverend Nathaniel Blount four conventions for this purpose. In 1794, at Tarboro, he was elected bishop of the proposed diocese. Unfortunately for the church, he failed to attend the next two triennial conventions at either one of which he would have been consecrated bishop, and at the time of his death there was neither bishop nor diocese in the state.

Pettigrew was more fortunate as a planter. In 1781 he purchased land in Tyrrell County to which he gradually added; eventually he owned two plantations on which he grew rice, wheat, and corn, and whose timber he made into shingles and barrels for sale....

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When he died in 1807, Charles Pettigrew was buried in the Blount cemetary at Mulberry Hill. In 1831, his son Ebenezer moved his remains to the family cemetary at Bonanza Plantation on Lake Phelps. This family cemetary is in Pettigrew State Park, approxmately 8 miles south of the Historical Marker, at N 35º 46.849 W 076º 23.711. When visiting this marker, it is worth the time to travel to Pettigrew State Park to visit the family cemetary, which also contains the grave of Civil War General James Johnston Pettigrew.

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