Greenville is the county chair of and the most populous city in Pitt County, North Carolina, United States; the principal city of the Greenville metropolitan area; and the 12th-most populous city in North Carolina. Greenville is the health, entertainment, and scholarly hub of North Carolina’s Tidewater and Coastal Plain. As of the 2020 census, there are 87,521 people in the city.

Greenville is the house of East Carolina University, the fourth-largest university circles in the University of North Carolina system, and ECU Health Medical Center, the flagship hospital for ECU Health and the teaching hospital for the Brody School of Medicine.

Greenville was founded in 1771 as “Martinsborough”, after the Royal Governor Josiah Martin. In 1774 the town was moved to its present location upon the south bank of the Tar River, three miles (4.8 km) west of its indigenous site. In 1786, the say was distorted to Greenesville in tribute of General Nathanael Greene, the American Revolutionary War hero. It was later abbreviated to Greenville.

During Greenville’s forward years, the Tar River was a navigable waterway; and by the 1860s there were several established steamboat lines transporting passengers and goods upon the river. Cotton was the leading agricultural crop, and Greenville became a major cotton export center. Before the face of the century, however, tobacco surpassed cotton and became the leading maintenance crop. Greenville became one of the state’s leading tobacco publicity and warehouse centers.