Qualla: New Bern, North Carolina

New Bern, North Carolina: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brezforprez, CC BY-SA 4.0. On August 24, 1898, a New Bern pharmacist named Caleb Bradham renamed the drink he had been mixing behind his soda fountain. He had been calling it Brad's Drink. He started calling it Pepsi-Cola, after dyspepsia — the digestive ailment the drink was marketed to relieve — and the kola nut. That little reformulation of branding would, in time, build a global empire and put a North Carolina coastal town on the back of millions of soda cans. But Pepsi is only the second-oldest founding story in New Bern. The first goes back almost two centuries earlier, to a Swiss aristocrat, a group of German Palatine refugees, and a confluence of two rivers in the marshy lowland of coastal North Carolina.

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Image: Brezforprez | CC BY-SA 4.0

New Bern, North Carolina: Founded by a Swiss Baron

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bigmacthealmanac, CC BY-SA 4.0. Christoph de Graffenried, 1st Baron of Bernberg, was a Bernese nobleman with grand ambitions and limited cash. In 1710, he led a colony of about 650 Palatine Germans - refugees from the wars of the Rhineland - and a smaller party of Swiss to the confluence of the Neuse and Trent ...

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Image: Bigmacthealmanac | CC BY-SA 4.0

New Bern, North Carolina: Colonial Capital, Palatial Governor's House

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Smallbones, Public domain. By the 1760s, New Bern was the political and commercial center of colonial North Carolina. In 1765 the colony designated it the capital, and from 1767 to 1770 Royal Governor William Tryon built a palatial home and seat of government on the south side of town. Tryon Palace, design...

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Image: Smallbones | Public domain

New Bern, North Carolina: War, Occupation, and a Long Recovery

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. In March 1862, Union forces under General Ambrose Burnside captured New Bern, and the town remained under federal occupation for the rest of the Civil War. The occupation transformed the town: thousands of enslaved African Americans crossed Union lines to freedom, and New Bern be...

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Image: Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided | Public domain

New Bern, North Carolina: Pepsi, Hurricanes, and the Long 20th Century

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tradewinds, CC BY-SA 3.0. Pepsi-Cola came in 1898, born in Bradham's drugstore at Pollock and Middle Streets. The drink moved out of New Bern eventually - PepsiCo today is headquartered in Purchase, New York - but a small museum on the original drugstore site, the Birthplace of Pepsi-Cola, draws steady vi...

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Image: Tradewinds | CC BY-SA 3.0

New Bern, North Carolina: What's Still Here

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Straitgate, Public domain. Today the New Bern Historic District holds one of the largest concentrations of pre-1865 architecture in coastal North Carolina - Federal townhouses, Greek Revival mansions, Italianate row buildings, Queen Anne wood-frame palaces, and the reconstructed Georgian splendor of Tryon ...

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Image: Straitgate | Public domain