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18 { CHAPTER ONE } Christopher de Graffenried The Dreamer It was a pleasant late-summer day, around the eleventh or twelfth of September 1711. Baron Christopher de Graffenried, John Lawson, the surveyor general for the colony of North Carolina, and Christopher Gale, its chief justice, had decided to make a trip up the Neuse River.1 Since De Graffenried’s colony of Swiss and German Palatines at the mouth of the Neuse River was thriving, expansion up the Neuse seemed a real possibility . Gale begged out at the last minute due to sickness in his family. So De Graffenried and Lawson, along with two black slaves and a couple of Indian guides, set out with both boat and horse up the Neuse River. They were well into their third day of the trip, maybe thirty miles upriver from New Bern, when everything changed. Suddenly from the forest appeared a large party of Indians. They seemed to come out of nowhere and quickly disarmed De Graffenried and Lawson, taking them as prisoners. Though the two men begged to be allowed to return downriver , in short order the baron, Lawson and the black slaves were forcibly marched away to Catchena, the main town of King Hancock of the Tuscaroras . Suddenly the late-summer days did not seem so promising. YTo some, he was the perfect fool. Christopher de Graffenried certainly seemed naive and trusting, the kind of person more worldly men often looked on as an easy mark. He was also snobbish, condescending, given to complaint, and said little good about anyone. Yet he was also brave, resolute, and possessed a keen sense of personal honor that he refused to compromise—all hallmarks of dreamers. And De Graffenried dreamed big. For a man who disliked people on an individual basis, he wanted to save the world, or at least a little part of it in North America. And if he Christopher de Graffenried / 19 could right his family fortunes while doing it, then all the better. But De Graffenried would soon learn how easily dreams could drown in eastern North Carolina. Born on November 15, 1661, in the town of Worb, canton of Bern, Switzerland, De Graffenried was the son of Anton, Lord of Worb, a minor Swiss nobleman and government official. They could not be considered a wealthy family, but they were certainly not poor. Proficient in French, German, and English, De Graffenried attended the University of Heidelberg , but his professors saw him as a mediocre student. He caroused, fought a duel, got into trouble for it, and eventually left the university. He next enrolled at the University of Leyden in the Netherlands, where he studied law, history, and math, but he was still an average student. On graduation and hoping to make his own fortune, he struck out for London , where he believed he had a job as an aide to the Duke of Carlyle. In London, the job fell through and suddenly De Graffenried found himself in a foreign city with no money. He survived by hitting up his father for funds, but he also made some connections that would serve him well, such as with Christopher Monck, the Second Duke of Albemarle, and with Sir John Colleton, both of them Lords Proprietors of Carolina. In fact, the Duke of Albemarle pulled strings to get De Graffenried an honorary Master of Arts degree from Cambridge University. But master’s degrees alone did not generate income. His father, tired of paying for his son’s spendthrift ways, now pressured De Graffenried to come home. In 1683, the wastrel returned to Bern.2 He married Regina Tscharner of Worb in 1684 and in 1691 the couple had their first child, a son also named Christopher. A bequest from his mother helped the family financially and De Graffenried and Regina soon had more children. But the money did not last and the costs of supporting his family put him into heavy debt. In 1702 De Graffenried was elected as the governor of Yverdon in Neuchâtel province. He had expected to receive a hefty income, but the duties of governor came with great expenses. When his term ended in 1708, he found himself poorer than when he started. The family moved to Bern trailed by a gaggle of creditors. Desperate to find financial security, De Graffenried’s mind turned back to London and his old friends the Duke of Albemarle and Sir John Colleton; the latter De Graffenried once called “my special...

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