Recently, I attempted to give a short geography lesson to a new resident of North Carolina. As we were discussing the locations of various counties and cities, I was reminded of how many towns and cities were not in the county one would suspect. To name a few….
- Davidson (town) is not in Davidson County…it is in Mecklenburg County.
- Henderson (town) is not in Henderson County…it is in Vance County.
- Hertford (town) is not in Hertford County…it is in Perquimans County.
- Lenoir (town) is not in Lenoir County…it is in Caldwell County.
- Rockingham (town) is not in Rockingham County…it is in Richmond County.
- Yanceyville (town) is not in Yancey County…it is in Caswell County.
- Neither Asheboro nor Asheville is in Ashe County. They are (respectively) in Randolph and Buncombe Counties.
I am not sure of the reason or reasons behind this, though I have had at least one idea emailed to me. If you’ve got a theory, float it our way.
And then we have the wonderful sharing of Washington and Beaufort as place names–with Washington being the seat of Beaufort County and Beaufort of Carteret County. Our Washington County has Plymouth as it’s county seat. Alas, we have no Plymouth County, for if we did, its seat would surely be Carteret.