Chinquapin, North Carolina

Chinquapin is an unincorporated community located adjacent to the Northeast Cape Fear River in Duplin County, North Carolina.HistoryThe roots of Chinquapin, North Carolina lie largely with the Thigpen family, who migrated to the area from Perquimans Precinct in the 1730s. James Thigpen, the first of the Duplin County Thigpens, obtained a patent for land bordering the Northeast Cape Fear River, establishing a plantation he called “Chinquapen Orchard.” James and his kin named many of the creeks around their new home after those in Perquimans – Cypress Creek, Muddy Creek, even Chinquapin itself. An Algonquian word, chinquapin, or "chinkapin," is a diminutive cousin of the American chestnut that is abundant along creeks and rivers of the Southeastern United States. According to Bible records, James Thigpen died at Chinquapen Orchard in 1737. His son, Dr. James Thigpen IV, purchased the land from his mother (she had remarried) for his son Job, holding it in trust until he reached maturity. When Job and his wife Annie began running the plantation in 1754, they dropped the latter part of the name, simply calling their home Chinquapin.During this period significant numbers of Scotch-Irish immigrants began arriving to the Cape Fear region, settling on land purchased from a London merchant named Henry McCulloch, who had obtained 71,160 acres along the river from the British Crown. There was extensive mingling between these newer inhabitants and those inhabitants who had been in the area for some time, such as the Thigpens, as marriage records substantiate.