New Bern North Carolina History

A "Carolina Charter" was issued by King Charles II of England after he was restored to the throne in 1660, granting his loyal supporters and drinking buddies, the Lords Proprietor, wide areas of land in the New World.

The Carolina Charter spread from Virginia to the Spanish border of Florida. The name Carolina came from "Carolus", the Latin word for Charles. William, Earl of Craven, was one of the original Lords Proprietor, and Craven County, of which New Bern is the county seat, bears his name.
 

Ravaged by decades of war by the French Huguenots attempted to regain their region for Louis XIV, along with crop failure, famine and plague, Protestant Germans and Swiss known as Palatines from the Pfalz or Palatine region of Germany began by 1709 to emigrate first to Rotterdam, then London, and on to Ireland or the New World.

In London, the impoverished Palatine families lived in tent cities in the parks until Protestant Queen Anne Stuart could help them get to her colonies in America. It so happened that four Native American Tribal Kings were also visiting London at that time. The Mohawk king offered to share land in the Mohawk valley of New York. As was typical during this period, the ocean voyage was long and difficult to survive due to the poor quality of food and water aboard ship. The infectious disease Typhus, popularly called afterward "Palatine fever", broke out onboard, and many immigrants, particularly children, died before reaching America.

The earliest immigrants to America from Germany were from the Rhineland Palatinate, or German border towns of France and German-speaking cantons of Switzerland. Beginning in the 1680s and growing into a flood by the 1720s, Palatine immigrants arrived in New York and southeastern Pennsylvania by the thousands, some coming to the Carolinas as well. The Palatine migration to the Hudson River Valley in New York, for example, turned out to be the largest single immigration to America in the colonial period.

The Palatines in Pennsylvania became known as the "Pennsylvania Dutch" (mistaken for Deutch or German), had large groups of Anabaptists, with followers of both the Amish faith and the similar Mennonite religion settling throughout the area. We have a small Mennonite population here, with a very popular local restaurant on Middle Street know as "Baker's Square", known for its fried chicken, and amazing homemade bread and pies.

While the original settlers in New Bern suffered due to the hotter climate than they were used to (very different from Switzerland and Germany!), a lack of familiar European provisions, diseases and Indian problems, they also found an abundance of natural resources, from fish to game to agriculture- all still prevalent today.

Reenactment of Tuscarora Indian attack on settlers (Courtesy: FtDobbs.org)

However, the colony was almost wiped out a year after settlement when the Tuscarora Indians, a local tribe who dominated the native populations in North Carolina, who, after their King was attacked by settlers and their lands seized, attacked New Bern in September 1711. They killed men, women and children, including William Bartram, father of America's most famous botanist, John Bartram (and ancestor of our intrepid realtor, Bob Bartram, of CENTURY 21 Zaytoun Raines!) 

On June 8, 1710, Tuscarora Indians on the Roanoke and Tar-Pamlico Rivers sent a petition to the government of Pennsylvania protesting the seizure of their lands and mistreatment of their people by Carolina settlers.
 

"Cartuca [Catechna, near present day Snow Hill] ] was the capital of the people whose ancestors were known to Raleigh's colonists as Croatans. That the people of King Tom Taylor of Cartuca were descended from members of the Lost Colony may be concluded from the Congressional Report of 1914-1915, by Special Indian Agent O.M. McPherson. It precluded their classification as "Native Americans," with the benefits they would derive from this status. Hugh and Clement Taylor were both members of the Lost colony, but it is not known which, if either, was an ancestor of King Taylor.

When John Lawson and Baron De Graffenried contracted for the settlement of Palatines in the geographically strategic site of Cartuca--now New Bern--in 1710, the people of King Taylor were initially pleased at the prospect of European neighbors. Their king, King Tom Taylor, was maternally descended from Sir Manteo (knighted Lord of Roanoake and Dasamonguepeuk by Queen Elizabeth) and an English adventurer named Taylor, and they were pleased at the prospect of European neighbors.

After agreeing to the sale, on the night of the celebration of the sale of Cartuca to the Europeans, it became clear to King Taylor that Lawson had bargained away far more from the Tuscaroras than Taylor ever intended to sell. King Taylor pleaded for brotherhood and cooperation between the whites and the Indians, using the English dialect of the Raleigh colonists.

Enraged at being asked to cooperate by a "savage" (even one dressed like Europeans and speaking English, ) Franz Michel, drunk on rum and egged on by other Europeans present, brutally beat King Taylor. When Taylor bitterly complained, John Lawson delivered an ultimatum to the Indians and had them thrown out of New Bern immediately. Taylor and his family and entourage left, nursing a grudge against Lawson and Michel. 

THE TUSCARORA WARS AND THE EXECUTION OF JOHN LAWSON  (from De Graffenried's own journals)

According to De Graffenried, some days before the New Bern massacre, John Lawson proposed that they go up the Neuse River, where there were plenty of wild grapes. They were assured "that no savages lived on that branch of the river. But to feel safer we took two Indians to guide, which we knew well, with two African slaves to row." Two days out, near the village of Coram, they were overtaken by a large number of Tuscaroras, and captured.

There was a trial of sorts, where their intentions were examined, and Mr. Lawson was charged with being too severe, and for selling their land. After a lengthy debate, it was decided that they should be released the next day, but the following morning, Cor (King) Tom reproached Mr. Lawson, and they quarreled. 

Depiction of Lawson's execution by the Tuscarora Indians

"I made every effort to get Lawson to quit quarrelling. I did not succeed. All at once, three or four Indians fell upon us in a furious manner. . . . They took our hats and periwigs and threw them into the fire, and a council of war being held we were immediately sentenced to death." One of the Indians, a relation of King Taylor, from whom De Graffenried had bought the land for New Bern, appealed in his behalf. "The Indians whispered in my ear that I had nothing to fear, but that Lawson would die, what affected me much. They also liberated my slave, but I never saw him since... As to Lawson's death, I know nothing. Some said he was hung, some said he was burnt. The Indians kept that execution very secret."

The Tuscaroras then informed De Graffenried that they were going to war, but would not harm Chattooka (New Bern), but that the people of New Bern ought to stay in the town -- unfortunately, there was no way to inform the people of New Bern. Several days later prisoners were brought back, and De Graffenried tells of recognizing some of them as his tenants, including a boy who reported that his whole family had been killed. After six weeks imprisonment at Catechna, he was released, and returned to New Bern, where the people were surprised to find him alive.

Thus started the Tuscarora Indian Wars. Skirmishes continued between European settlers and the Tuscarora until the Tuscarora were defeated by militia from South Carolina in 1712-1713, and the colony eventually began to prosper.

THE COLONIAL PERIOD

.

Gates of the Tryon Palace, named after British Governor William Tryon, housed the governor's family when North Carolina was a British colony and New Bern was the capital of the colony. Governor Tryon later left New Bern to become Governor of New York

"Colonial" family enjoys the weather during a summer reenactment on the Tryon Palace grounds.

Renowned in the South were the Masonic Temple and the Athens Theater, both still very active today in our town. The Masonic Theater is the oldest theater in America in continous use!

Reenactment at the New Bern Academy, First Chartered School in NC