The Cupola House (1758) houses the Edenton Museum.

During our visit to Edenton, NC, my wife Linda and I visited the Edenton Museum located in the Cupola House, one of the many unique and beautifully preserved homes in the town. It was built in 1758 and restored and furnished in 1967 as a museum. Linda was delighted to discover that Edenton remembers its women.

We knew that even though the Boston Tea Party got most of the press, the Charleston Tea Party actually occured earlier in 1773. At the Edenton Museum we found out that Edenton had their own Tea Party on October 25, 1774.

Fifty- one ladies of the town met and openly resolved that "We, the Ladys of Edenton, do hereby solemnly engage not to conform to the Pernicious Custom of Drinking Tea," and that "We, the aforesaid Ladys will not promote ye wear of any manufacturer from England until such time that all acts which tend to enslave our Native country shall be repealed." The site of the Edenton Tea Party is marked by a Colonial teapot mounted on a Revolutionary cannon. This pleased Linda, once the Carolina Tea Lady, very much.

The site of the Edenton Tea Party is marked by a Colonial teapot mounted on a Revolutionary cannon.

Another woman of Edenton fame was Harriet Jacobs, an abolitionist and author born as a slave in the town in 1813. She escaped in 1835, lived in her grandmother's attic for seven years, then fled to Philadelphia. In 1842 in New York City she worked as a nursemaid for a publisher. With his encouragement she wrote Incidents in the Life of a S lave Gi rl , which was published as a series in the New York Tribune and later in book form. This autobiography played a role in the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment. Jacobs died in 1897 in Washington, DC.

Harriet Jacobs was born into slavery in Edenton, escaped, and wrote an influential autobiography. The Chowan County Courthouse in Edenton (ca 1767) has been characterized as "The finest example of Georgian architecture in the South."