to
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) is a town in Beaufort County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 733 at the 2000 census. The town is a part of the Greenville Metropolitan Area located in North Carolina's Coastal Plains region.
In the early 20th century, Chocowinity became the railroad hub of the regional system known as the Norfolk Southern Railway in 1910. The town is sometimes called
as a result of a railroad communications problem. Around 1917, the railway started calling the pivotal location "Marsden", which was easier to spell on a telegraph than "Chocowinity". The source of the new name was apparently taken in honor of one of its financial backers, Marsden J. Perry of New York, who eventually served as president of the railroad.
The regional Norfolk Southern (one of the predecessors of the modern system which adopted the same name) had lines between Norfolk, Virginia and Charlotte and served many locations in southestern Virginia (including branches to Virginia Beach and Suffolk) and most of eastern and central North Carolina, including Elizabeth City, New Bern, Morehead City, Goldsboro, Raleigh, Durham, Fayetteville, North Carolina and Asheville. The regional carrier was acquired by the Southern Railway, and lent its historic name to the merger with the Norfolk and Western in the early 1980s to form the current large Norfolk Southern Railway System. The railroad resumed using "Chocowinity" to designate the location in 1970, after railway telegraphs were replaced with voice communications via 2-way radios.