Swiss colonizer Christopher Graffenried, hoping to restore his family’s fortunes in North America, immigrated from Switzerland to London, where he formed a partnership in 1707 with Louis Mitchell to organize a Swiss colony in the Proprietorship of Carolina. Mitchell had been appointed by the canton of Bern to find a suitable site to resettle Protestant refugees who were flooding into Switzerland because of Louis XlV’s wars. A great favorite of Queen Anne (1702-14), Graffenried used his influence at court to gain royal approval for the project, which also offered the British government a solution for their own resettlement of Protestant refugees from the Palatinate. With the plan subsidized by the Crown and Graffenried created a baron, the settlement seemed viable, and the first boatload of colonists sailed in January 1710.
Unfortunately, more than half the colonists died en route, either onboard ship or during the travel overland through Virginia. When Graffenried arrived months later, he found the settlers sick and desperate and the government of Carolina in chaos after the death of the governor, who had been too busy with politics to provide the promised support. Struggling to found their settlement, the Swiss and Palatine colonists were caught in the 1711 outbreak of the Tuscarora War and survived only because Graffenried promised neutrality in the fight between the local Indians and Carolina settlers. Even so, the new settlement was battered by the war. Graffenried attempted to secure mining concessions to provide his people with an income, but this scheme failed. Selling his interests in the land, he returned to Switzerland. Eventually, New Bern’s location made it successful as a trading post, and it survived to attract further Swiss and Palatine immigration.
—Margaret Sankey
World History
