Edenton is a town on Albemarle Sound in Chowan County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 5,004 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Chowan County. Edenton is located in North Carolina's Inner Banks region. In recent years Edenton has become a popular retirement location and a destination for heritage tourism.Edenton was the birthplace of Harriet Ann Jacobs, an enslaved African American who escaped and fled to the North. She became a writer and spoke publicly as an abolitionist. Her memoir, a slave narrative published under a pen name of Linda Brent, was entitled Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.