BY NICOLE LAYTON
Staff Writer
Edenton Town Council and the Chowan County Board of Commissioners will hold a special joint meeting to begin moving the Confederate Monument currently located at the end of South Broad Street to county property.
The meeting will be held at 5:30 p.m. Monday, Nov 25, at Town Council Chambers, 504 S. Broad St., Edenton.
According to the agenda, both boards will consider “approval of a Memorandum of Understanding and Agreement where Chowan County agrees to accept the Confederate Monument from the Town of Edenton and permit it to be relocated to the grounds of the current Chowan County Courthouse.”
The courthouse, at the intersection of Queen and Broad streets in Edenton, is located on several acres that includes a parking lot and green space. The majority of the green space is located beside the county jail and behind the courthouse — at the intersection of Court and Queen streets — and includes the Chowan County Veterans Memorial.
The Confederate Monument erected in the early 1900s after a fundraiser by Bell Battery Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy aimed to honor residents of Chowan County who died while serving the Confederacy during the Civil War.
The first donation toward the $2,000 cost was made by a nine year old, W. D. Pruden Jr., who gave two cents to the project.
By 1904, the chapter secured enough funds to erect the base and shaft which were dedicated on June 3, 1904. On that day, 75 veterans were in attendance for the services. The bronze statue was unveiled on May 10, 1909.
The statue was originally on the green space in front of the original Chowan County courthouse on King Street and moved to its current location on South Broad Street in the 1960s.
Recent protests about the monument’s location have been going on since at least 2020, according to news reports.
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[…] Town Council and the Chowan County Board of Commissioners will hold a special joint meeting to approve the MOU at 5:30 p.m. Monday, Nov 25, at Town Council Chambers, 504 S. Broad St., […]