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NPS Form 10 - 900 - a OMB No . 1024 - 0018 ( 8 - 86 ) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES CONTINUATION SHEET Section 8 Page 15 Woodville Historic District Bertie County, North Carolina ille was originally built by farmers, who owned large farms . on the Roanoke The Village of Woodv River and in the Indian Woods, mostly for the purpose of locating their families in a healthy place, . for the social advantages denied them on widely separated farms and also for the convenience of sending their children to a good school . . . . Most of the residences were surrounded by large groves of oaks some distance from the road which ran through the village . It was a beautiful place in those days inhabited by people of wealth and refinement . 1 The antebellum planter families of Woodvillew the Pughs, Thompsons and others- -began to amass land in the eighteenth century, purchasing hundreds or thousands of acres of swampland and rich river bottomland in the region . The oldest residence in what became Woodville was built in 1801 for John Pugh Hill on high dry land at a crossroads where the road leading from Roxobel on the north to Windsor on the east joined up with roads to Hill ' s and Taylor ' s ferries, the two major crossing points of the winding Roanoke River in western Bertie County . One year later, Whitmel Hill Pugh married Hill ' s widow and took up residence in the house, named Woodville . Pugh, a distinguished Bertie County, native, was a physician, a planter who raised a large number of hogs and sold the meat in Richmond , and a state legislator. With two brothers he emigrated in 1819 to Louisiana, where each established a large cotton plantation . Eventually the Pugh family converted their plantations to the production of sugar cane, and became one of the most prominent and wealthy families in the state . They constructed two of the grandest tripartite Classical Revival plantation villas in Louisiana : Woodlawn, built in the 1830s by Whitmel W . Pugh (son of Whitmell Hill Pugh) , and Madewood , built in the 1840s by Thomas Pugh. Whitmel Hill Pugh held on to his Woodville plantation and sent his children to Woodville for their education . His son William W . lived at Woodville until the 1830s when he returned to Louisiana and followed in his father ' s footsteps . Whitmel Hill Pugh died in 1834 after returning from a trip to North Carolina , 2 Pugh ' s younger brother William Alston Pugh built the next house in the village [William A. Pugh House] about 1815 directly across the road on a small parcel given to him by his brother. William A. , unlike his brothers, remained in Woodville throughout his life . Other heads of household found the location suitable for residences as well, including Noah B . Hinton, Hezekiah Thompson, Col . Jesse Averitt, and John Smaw Smallwood (Dr. Smallwood ' s father) . Col . Jesse Averitt built his house at the crossroads near William Pugh, where he lived until the late 1840s when he sold off his homeplace and moved to the state of Florida. In 1816 the area had sufficient population that a post office named Turner' s Cross Roads was located there. Other village amenities , such as stores, a school , a hotel , a tailor shop and a blacksmith shop , followed . Dr. Smallwood recalled the old store that stood just below the old tavern . . . the country people used to meet on this old road on Saturday drink apple brandy, get drunk and occasionally fight . I have seen many fights there . Old Ned Williams, a soldier of the Revolutionary War died there sitting on the steps . . .Elections and musters were held there. " The nearest church was Jumping Run Church (also known as Pugh Chapel) , located one mile, north in Lewiston . 1 " Recollections of Woodville . " 2 Whitmel Hill Pugh , Dictionary of North Carolina Biography; Harnett T . Kane , Plantation Parade, 216 .