Belvidere Historic District

Belvidere Historic District covers roughly 324 acres on the east bank of the Perquimans River in northern Perquimans County, North Carolina. At its center is the small village of Belvidere, surrounded by farm fields, timberland, drainage ditches and a few roads. The district grew from a late eighteenth-century trading center at Newby's Bridge and, after 1833, from the Eastern Quarterly Meeting Friends Boarding School, which gave the area a strong Quaker identity. A post office moved nearer the school in 1861 and took the name Belvidere. Paving of NC 37 in 1926 linked local farmers to markets in Suffolk, Virginia. The buildings are all frame and include Federal and Greek Revival houses, Victorian and Queen Anne dwellings, bungalows and farm complexes with outbuildings, stores, a mill complex and a cemetery. Field patterns, roads and waterways have changed little, so the district preserves a clear picture of a Quaker farming community from about 1800 to 1949.