Old Neck Historic District

Old Neck is a rural farming district of roughly 3,365 acres lying across the Perquimans River from Hertford, North Carolina. Bounded by the river and Suttons Creek, it is mostly flat, open farmland crossed by drainage ditches, with five major plantation seats and several smaller farms. Its buildings range from Federal and Greek Revival plantation houses, such as the William Jones house of 1813 and Cove Grove, built about 1830, to plain farmsteads finished in 1946. Most are wood frame with brick foundations and chimneys. The district illustrates the shift from antebellum plantations worked by enslaved labor to tenant farming and small independent farms. Rare outbuildings survive, including a slave kitchen and carriage house at Cove Grove. Land has stayed with descendants of the Nixon, Jones, Skinner and Fletcher families, and the fields, roads, ditches and woodland remain little changed. Recent mobile homes and ranch houses are scattered, mostly in wooded areas.