Bath Historic District

North Carolina's oldest town, established in 1705, served as a haven for the pirate Blackbeard after he accepted a royal pardon in 1718. The notorious captain married his 14th bride here and was treated as a celebrity by locals, including Governor Charles Eden.

Bath holds the distinction of being North Carolina's first incorporated town, established in 1705 between the Pamlico River and Bath Creek. This colonial settlement boasted the state's first library, first church, and first free school. It should have become the state capital. Instead, Bath is now called "Blackbeard's Haunt"—a tiny village frozen in time, haunted by the pirate who made it his home and cursed by a preacher who condemned it to eternal obscurity.

In the summer of 1718, the most infamous pirate of the age sailed into Bath seeking something unexpected: legitimacy. Edward Teach, known as Blackbeard, arrived to accept a royal pardon from Governor Charles Eden. The "reformed" pirate befriended the governor, married a local woman, and settled at Plum Point across the creek from town. The arrangement suited both men—Blackbeard gained respectability, while Eden was widely believed to share in the pirate's spoils in exchange for protection.

Blackbeard's reformation was short-lived. He soon returned to piracy, using Bath as a base for his operations and a place to dispose of plunder. The arrangement ended violently on November 22, 1718, when Captain Robert Maynard of the Royal Navy killed Blackbeard in a battle at Ocracoke Inlet. The pirate's head was severed and hung from Maynard's bowsprit as proof of his death.

But Blackbeard never truly left Bath. Members of the Bonner family, longtime residents, have told of a phenomenon called "Blackbeard's Lights." During violent storms, a ball of fire as large as a man's head appears, sailing back and forth between Plum Point and Archbell Point throughout the night—perhaps the ghost of the pirate still patrolling the waters he once controlled.

Bath's other curse came from a different source. When the town's founding fathers unceremoniously asked traveling evangelist George Whitefield to leave, he cursed the settlement, declaring it would forever remain a small village. After its promising beginning, Bath was plagued by political rivalries, epidemics, Indian wars, and natural disasters. A better port eventually opened upriver in Washington, and Bath's growth simply stopped. To this day, it remains a village of a few hundred souls—Whitefield's curse apparently fulfilled.

The original town limits now form a National Historic District, anchored by the restored St. Thomas Church (the state's oldest), the Palmer-Marsh House (a National Historic Landmark), the Van Der Veer House, and the Bonner House. Ghost tours guide visitors past Blackbeard's Tavern, through the streets where the pirate once walked, to sites where paranormal activity has been reported for generations.

Bath invites visitors to walk in Blackbeard's footsteps along the Pirate Trail, to stand where the most notorious buccaneer of the Golden Age of Piracy sought refuge, married, and was betrayed. The town that gave shelter to Blackbeard remains small, haunted, and frozen in the early 18th century—a cursed village that time forgot.