- Title
- North Carolina historical review [1945 : April]
-
-
- Date
- April 1945
-
-
- Place
- ["North Carolina, United States"]
-
North Carolina historical review [1945 : April]
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EIGHTEENTH CENTURY NEW BERN
A HISTORY OF THE TOWN
and
CRAVEN COUNTY, 1700-1800
By Alonzo Thomas Dill, Je.
PART II
ТПЕ
FOUNDING OF NEW BERN
1i We are in a very good and tat land. I am in hopes that within
a year I shall have over a hundred head of horses, cattle and swine.
— Letter of Hans Kuegsegger, 1711.
By the time colonists had made their way along the lower
banks of the Neuse and even up along the Trent River, it would
have been strange indeed if no settler had chosen land at the
point where the two rivers meet. It was a very desirable site.
Long before the coming of the white man, about twenty families
of Neuse Indians had claimed it for their village Chattooka, which
was; situated on the tip of the peninsula-like projection.1 They
were not alone there by 1705, for in that year there was at least
one white settler living on “the fork at Neuse,” as the records
then refer to this point between the Neuse and Trent.2
This settler was the venturesome John Lawson. The record
of his grant has been lost, but that he had one there is certain.
In a letter dated August 7, 1705, and addressed to the Albe¬
marle County government, Lawson refers to the “entry of 640
Acres of Land I built on” as being at “yc fork of Neus River.” 3
He adds that his party in surveying this tract had to go up the
main river and then up the Trent, and he mentions also that the
claim had been filed in the office of the Secretary of the province.
1 John Lawson, History of North Carolina, p. 131. Vincent H. Todd and Julius Goebel,
Christoph von Graff enried’s Account of the Founding of New Bern (Raleigh : North Carolina
Historical Commission, 1920), pp. 226, 373-374. This contains an introduction followed
by the French and German versions of the Graffenried account, as well as certain other
GrafFenried MSS and letters of Swiss settlers in New Bern. (In future references, the
MS or document quoted from will be named followed by the page number of the Todd and
Goebel publication. When reference is made to the introduction, the citation will be "Todd
and Goebel, intro.,” followed by the page number.)
2 Colonial Records of North Carolina, XXII, 291, passim.
3 Historical and Genealogical Register, III, 266. He seems to have acquired additional
land there later because he sold 1,250 acres nt the Neuse-Trent fork to GralTenried and his
colonizing associates. See below, page 164.
[ 152 ]
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