Tarboro (pronunciation: ) is a town located in Edgecombe County, North Carolina, United States. It is part of the Rocky Mount Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of the 2010 census, the town had a population of 11,415. It is the county seat of Edgecombe County. Tarboro is located near the western edge of North Carolina's coastal plain. It has many historical churches, some dating from the early 19th century.
Tarboro was chartered by British colonists in 1760. Located in a bend of the Tar River, it was an important river port, the head of navigation on the Tar just east of the fall line of the Piedmont. As early as the 1730s, a small European-American community developed around this natural asset. Its warehouse, customs office and other commercial concerns, together with a score of "plain and cheap" houses, made a bustling village.
The locals were a scrappy bunch, and gave the early governors and their agents a hard time. Edgecombe County residents came down hard on the side of the American Revolution, many serving as officers in the Continental Army. One such was Thomas Blount (1759–1812), whose handsome plantation house "The Grove" has been restored and is open for tours on a daily basis. A very young officer, Blount was captured during the Revolution and sent to England as a prisoner of war. After his return to North Carolina, he participated in one of the largest merchant/shipping companies in late 18th-century America.
"The Grove" was later owned by Colonel Louis Dicken Wilson (1789–1847), who served in the North Carolina Senate and fought in the Mexican-American War. Another owner, Col. John Luther Bridgers (1821–1884), was Commandant of Fort Macon in the American Civil War.
Civil War general William Dorsey Pender is buried in Calvary Churchyard in Tarboro. Pender was considered one of the most promising young generals in Lee's army when he was mortally wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg on July 2, 1863. He is memorialized in the name of Pender County, North Carolina, founded in 1875. His letters to his wife were published posthumously as The General to his Lady: The Civil War Letters of William Dorsey Pender to Fanny Pender (1965).