Newbern: Swiss Settlers and a Lost County Seat

Newbern sits in Pulaski County, but it takes its name from Bern, Switzerland, because a large share of its earliest settlers came from the Swiss cantons and chose to honor the city they had left behind.

Adam Hance founded the community in eighteen ten on a large grant that the Wilderness Road crossed, along the wagon road between Christiansburg and what is now Wytheville.

For more than fifty years Newbern was the county seat of Pulaski County. Then in eighteen ninety-two a courthouse fire destroyed the building, and a bitter fight broke out over where the replacement would stand. The seat eventually moved to the Town of Pulaski, and Newbern has been a quiet crossroads ever since.