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Samuel Peacock built a toll bridge prior to 1751 in present-day Stantonsburg in Wilson County. Peacock’s Bridge provided a way of passage across Contentnea Creek. On May 6, 1781, it was the site of a skirmish between Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton’s British dragoons and Col. James Gorham’s militia.
After crossing the Neuse River, Col. Tarleton’s men met about 400 militiamen waiting for them at the bridge. Tarleton’s forces dispersed the militia, but not without taking some losses, and headed on toward Tarboro.
Gen. Jethro Sumner filed a report to Gen. Nathanael Greene, indicating, “The best accounts we have had of the enemy’s march towards this quarter, say that about 800 were at Peacock’s Bridge on Cotentney in the road leading to Tarborough that they had put to route a part of Militia of about 400, under Col. Gorum by a party of Tarleton’s horse and fifty Tories. The people are moving before them; most of the public stores here, I flatter myself, will be moved off, and out of the way.”
References:
Walter Clark, ed., Colonial Records of North Carolina, XV, 456
James M. Creech, History of Greene County (1979)
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