Baron von Graffenried and the Founding of New Bern

The city of New Bern owes its existence to a Swiss nobleman whose American ambitions outpaced his resources. Christoph von Graffenried was born in the canton of Bern in sixteen sixty-one, and by the early seventeen hundreds he had convinced London and Swiss investors to fund a new colony in Carolina. He named his settlement New Bern in honor of his homeland.

In seventeen ten, Palatine German and Swiss settlers, after a deadly crossing that killed roughly half of the first party, arrived at the meeting of the Neuse and Trent Rivers, joining a surveying party led by explorer John Lawson. The colony barely survived its first years. Tuscarora leaders, angered by encroachments on their land, captured both Graffenried and Lawson in seventeen eleven. Graffenried negotiated his own release, but Lawson was executed. Graffenried eventually returned to Switzerland having lost his fortune in the venture. The town he planted survived, however, and New Bern went on to become colonial North Carolina's capital, a role it held for decades. The name on its streets today still carries the echo of Bern, Switzerland.