The earliest settlers on the Neuse were French Huguenots, who first located on the James River, in Virginia, but were afterwards induced by the proprietors of Carolina to accept grants of land in what is now known as Carteret County, to which place they removed in 1707.  In 1710 a colony from Switzerland and Germany, under the management of Baron de Graffenreid and Louis Michell arrived, and were settled between the Neuse and the Trent, and in the triangle formed by these rivers, laid out a town with wide streets and convenient lots, which in remembrance of the capital in the Old World, was called New-Bern.

The settlers who already resided north of New-Bern soon rebelled against their local government, and by continued depredations on the Indian tribes in their vicinity at last brought on a fearful war, during which a large part of both the white and red men were exterminated, so that many of the poor Swiss and German Protestants found they had only escaped their vindictive persecutors at home to find a bloody grave in the forests of Carolina.

After the surrender of their grant to the crown by the lords proprietors of Carolina, in 1729, a better state of affairs succeeded, and a more energetic government, with its blessings and prosperity was the result.  The country was then settled and Newbern gradually rose to be a place of importance, and subsequently the capital of the province.

The first printing-press in the province was established in 1764, and the first periodical, The North-Carolina Magazine, issued the same year, but it is doubtful if any book excepting the State laws was ever published there.  A public school was incorporated the same year, and Newbern became the principal seat of education and social intelligence in the province.  As the seat of government and the residence of the royal Governors, it attracted much wealth, and developed a degree of culture which it has retained to a later day.

Arthur Dobbs, for a long period the Colonial Governor, was at this time closely identified with the history of Newbern.  He was ’by birth an Irishman, and by nature an aristocrat.’  He died at an advanced age in 1764.

In 1765, William Tryon succeeded Dobbs as Governor of North-Carolina.  He first resided at Brunswick, on the Cape Fear River, then a town of note, but now a complete ruin, and where among its remains are still seen the massive walls of St. Philip’s Church, built by his request, at the expense of the British government.

As Newbern was a more central position, and possessed more social advantages, Tryon took up his abode there, not, however, till he had made himself odious by irritating the people of the western part of the province into a rebellion, and had butchered many who were contending only for justice and their rights.