Back in 1980, when I told a casual friend that we were planning to move to northeast North Carolina, he was aghast. That’s swamp country, he blurted. All I remember thinking is that I mustn’t show my ignorance. After all, we were already committed to the move, and it seemed like I should know about swamps.

But, frankly, I hadn’t noticed any when we bought the property. Cotton and corn fields, creeks and canals, yes, and golden sun and humidity. Anyway, what, exactly, was a swamp?

Foggy morning in the Great Dismal Swamp of today. US Fish& Wildlife Service

We found out by living in swamp country for 36 years, straight-arrow down from Long Island, New York, where we had watched traffic and development clog up life and land and decided to leave. This pancake of a coastal plain drew us in, took us back to the south shore coastal plain of Long Island in olden days.

In fact, our backyard, we soon learned, was swamp. We began to suspect something amiss when daffodil bulbs planted on what seemed like terra firma disappeared into watery depths. Oh my! The area had been used as a fill site when canals were dug into swamp fingers that laced the land. This was all done before the Clean Water Act forbade filling wetlands willy-nilly.

A romantic nook in our garden, rarely watered, thrives  in  wetlands soil tempered by roots of trees that take their share of plentiful water

We took our canoe into creeks with swamps. We learned a little history. We learned how important they are to preserving water quality. We began, with others, to advocate for preservation.

We didn’t want to lose a second time.

I liked the people we met who lived on farms and in small towns that had been swamps before they were drained. They watched the sun and the sky. They measured life in generations that spanned centuries. Almost four of them.

The 1786 Pendleton House in Nixonton, Pasquotank County still has cotton fields surrounding it. Melissa Dawn

Their ancestors had learned to survive in a land where giant trees hid the sun and one misstep could sink you, if the bugs didn’t get you first. The Jamestown and Plymouth colonies seemed like easy-street in comparison.

They were steely and independent, some of them probably a bit too cheeky to fit into the establishment of the day. Straggling loners and families they were, on an untidy migration from Virginia. They had no forwarding address.

They survived isolation and grievous losses. Instinct and long memories served basic needs, conditions we cannot possibly fathom, tethered as we are to media lines and micro-chips.

Above all, it was the rivers that guided them south. They settled near creeks that fed the rivers, and rich bottomlands sustained life and the new arrivals learned the ways of the waters.

It was a long time coming, but isolation was finally broken by canals and steamships, and the world looked hungrily at the rich gifts of the Albemarle and its rivers. Forests and fisheries freely gave raw materials that fueled a growing country’s dietary and industrial needs. For a while, propelled by slavery, this brought prosperity to many.

River herring and alewife streaming upriver to old spawning ground for mating. Photo by Robert Michelson

Most everyone thought the gifts would last forever. But they didn’t.

Today, the Albemarle is reinventing itself. It’s a balancing act. Eco-tourism conserves human history and natural history, but will it offer provender enough? At the same time, sea level is rising and challenging residents of the coastal plain.

Each river plays a special role in the Albemarle, and each has its particular profile, yet each is rooted in this gentle landscape with a lively history, largely unknown.

We are pleased to present our research of the past four years on these rivers, together with pictures gathered from many sources.

A lone fishermen at sunrise on the Perquimans River. Our State Magazine photo

You can read about the unique history of each river by following the links below, or going to the sidebar and clicking on a river listed under Albemarle River Series.

The Alligator River The Wildest of them all

The Chowan River And the Mighty Herring Fisheries

The Pasquotank River Seat of Canal and Commerce

The Perquimans River Early Settlements and Farming

The Roanoke River Life-Giving River of Death