A small article appeared in the 13 Jan 1897 Daily Journal (New Bern, Wed. p.2) stating “Notice is hereby given that application will be made to the next General Assembly of the State of North Carolina to change and amend the Charter of the city of New Berne.” At the next meeting in 1897, the name of our city was officially changed to its current spelling, New Bern.  But what had been its official name prior and why did it change?

New Bern was founded in 1710 by Baron Christoph von Graffenried of Bern, Switzerland.   The Baron named it New Bern in honor of the city of his birth. In 1723, the General Assembly enacted that the place be “Incorporated into a Township, by the Name of Newbern… with all Privileges which ever have belonged to the said town, or shall hereafter be expressed, forever. (Laws of North Carolina, 1723-pg 204 Section XIII).

Although the official name was Newbern, it was not spelled that way on various maps, newspapers, and official documents, which led to much confusion over the years. On June 6, 1891, Henry Gannett, a famous geographer and mapmaker wrote to the City Clerk, William Oliver, and asked him about the true spelling of the name.

“Dear Sir, I find great uncertainty in spelling the name of your city.  It is spelled Newbern, Newberne, New Bern, New Berne and Newburn.  I take the liberty of appealing to you to inform us as fully as possible what the usage is in the official documents of the city.  In case you have documents at hand, I should be glad to know under what name the city is chartered”.

Oliver’s’ response was that “…up until 1862 the official name was spelled Newbern and it had been chartered as such.”  Oliver sent Gannett a copy of the “Acts of the General Assembly published in 1793” as proof.   Oliver referenced the fact that the town had been captured by Union forces and had been in the hands of Union troops for three years.  “The post office, and every office both town and county, the banks, the newspaper, were all in the hands of those who recently settled here.  The stamps at the post office at this time were changed from Newbern to New Berne as well as the newspaper and county offices.  This change was made by comparative strangers without a scintilla of law or authority.” (State Chronicle, July 23, 1891, p.4) Gannett subsequently settled upon Newbern as the official spelling.

In 1897 local businessman, James Augustus Bryan helped to initiate legislation to officially change the spelling again. The town continued to be referred to as Newberne which Bryan and others blamed upon Union soldiers for adding an “e” at the end. This led to the January 1893 notice in the paper that there was to be an application to change or amend the charter of the city of New Berne. This resulted in the General Assembly of NC action in February 1897 to establish that the “corporation heretofore existing as the city of Newbern shall hereafter be known and designated as the city of New Bern, and all laws in conflict with the above are hereby repealed.” Now you know when our city officially became New Bern.

Sneden, Robert Knox. [Plan of the Battle of Newberne ! North Carolina: fought March 14th 1862]. [to 1865, 1862] Map. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/gvhs01.vhs00079/. (Accessed December 12, 2017.)

December 1, 1922 started out in anticipatory fashion as over 400 people from New Bern left for Raleigh to attend the Eastern Carolina Football Championship between New Bern and Sanford. By the end of the day, New Bern would suffer from the worst fire in North Carolina history, leaving 3,200 — one fourth of the population — homeless, a thousand buildings destroyed, hundreds of jobs lost and an area of forty blocks totally destroyed at an estimated loss of two and a half million dollars. It would hence forth be known as “The Great Fire.”

The morning of December 1 was cold and overcast with gale-like winds. At 8:00 a.m. a fire broke out at the Rowland Lumber Company, the largest sawmill in North Carolina. Every fireman and piece of equipment was sent to fight the blaze, but they had difficulty in controlling the flames sweeping through the dry lumber in the yard and were hampered by insufficient manpower due to the number of people who had left town for the game. At 10:45 a.m. a fire started in the chimney of a small house on Kilmarnock Street near the Five Point intersection in New Bern. By the time the firefighters responded, three more houses were burning out of control. The 70 miles per hour winds moved east towards the Neuse River. As the fire spread rapidly down to George Street the wind then spread the fire North and West. By midday, Fire Chief James K. Bryan, put out frantic calls to neighboring towns for help, and fearing that the entire town would be destroyed, decided to use dynamite to level the houses in the path of the inferno and to create a firebreak. Shortly before dusk, the wind shifted and died down and the fire was finally brought under control. Unbelievably, there was only one casualty, an elderly African American woman who was too crippled to escape her home.

That night, fire victims sought refuge in Cedar Grove and Greenwood Cemeteries and many had escaped with only the clothes on their back. Fort Bragg responded to a call for help by sending eight freight cars loaded with tents, cots, mattresses, and other needed equipment and officers and men arrived to oversee the erection of the tents which later became known as “Tent City.” Cots, blankets and clothing were sent by the Navy base at Norfolk and nearby towns immediately began collecting used clothing and money to help the homeless. The Red Cross moved in and was placed in full charge of the relief effort. West Street School, which miraculously escaped the fire, was opened to feed thousands of meals for the African Americans who were homeless. Local businesses and townspeople assisted in these endeavors.

The City decided to condemn about twenty acres of the burned area to widen and straighten the streets, to extend Cedar Grove Cemetery and to create a city park. There was much protest over this decision because most of the houses that had stood in the condemned area were owned by the African American families who had resided there. Today, Kafer Park, the cemetery extension, and the George Street Senior Center building are on this property.

In case you wanted to know, New Bern won the championship game, 6-0.

Photo of the Great Fire of 1922 Courtesy of the New Bern Fire Museum

On November 26, 1787, in New Bern, a judicial milestone was set in the landmark case of Bayard vs. Singleton. The case is significant not just for the judicial precedent set in this case, but also for the number of attorneys and judges who played major roles in the history and development of our new nation.

Samuel Cornell was a wealthy merchant in New Bern and one of the richest men in the state. During the Revolutionary War, he remained loyal to the King. He refused to sign an oath of allegiance to the revolutionary cause and fled to England in August of 1775. He returned in 1777 to his family’s home in New York. Meanwhile, the NC General Assembly confiscated his land and home and sold it to help finance the war. A local New Bern merchant, Spyers Singleton, purchased Cornell’s home. The Cornell family resided in Flushing, NY where one of his daughters, Elizabeth Cornell, married William Bayard Jr. In 1787, Elizabeth Cornell Bayard returned to New Bern to file a lawsuit against the state to recover the property that had been deeded to her by her father. A lawsuit was filed on her behalf by her attorney Samuel Johnston (who later became Governor of NC). William R. Davie (who also became Governor and was known as the “Father” of the University of N.C.) assisted Johnston. James Iredell, a legal scholar, was also retained by Mrs. Bayard and he later became a US Supreme Court Justice. Spyers Singleton, the defendant, hired another future Governor, Abner Nash, as his attorney along with Alfred Moore (who would later serve on the US Supreme Court).

The essence of Bayard’s argument was that North Carolina’s Constitution of 1776 guaranteed a citizen the right to a jury trial in a case involving the loss of property rights. After the war ended, the 1783 Treaty of Paris stipulated that confiscated property would be returned to its original owners. However, in 1785 the NC legislature barred state courts from hearing lawsuits by former Loyalists trying to recover their property, contrary to the Treaty of Paris. The court, consisting of Judges Samuel Ashe, Samuel Spenser and John Williams heard the case but delayed a decision, hoping that either a settlement would be reached or the legislature would repeal the confiscation laws. After the parties could not come to an agreement, the court concluded that it could not enforce the 1785 NC statute as it was inconsistent with the Constitution. The decision was highly controversial. Richard Dobbs Spaight, one of the signers of the US Constitution, questioned whether the court had a right to overturn legislation as unconstitutional.

The court eventually ruled against Bayard, citing the fact that when her father left for England, he did not return before the General Assembly confiscated his lands. Therefore, he was not actually a citizen of the US. The court ruled that Mrs. Bayard, as a citizen in 1787 had a right to a trial, but Cornell did not have the right to deed his property to her in 1777 in the first place. As possibly the first legal decision in the new United States in which a court nullified a law because it was found to be unconstitutional, this ruling was an early example of the system of checks and balances vital to the new American democracy. Bayard vs. Singleton served as a precedent and precursor to Marbury vs. Madison, the 1803 US Supreme Court decision that established judicial review.

On September 1, 1870, Abraham Galloway — slave, abolitionist, spy, recruiter, and political leader — died in Wilmington, NC. He was only thirty-three years old when he succumbed to fever and jaundice. He was born to a white father and a black mother, who was a slave in Smithville, NC. His owner allowed him to seek masonry jobs, but when he could not earn the required $15 per month, Galloway decided to escape. At the age of 20, he hid on a ship loaded with turpentine and fled from Wilmington, NC to Philadelphia, PA. In Philadelphia, he became an abolitionist and began working with the Underground Railroad to help people escape to Canada. In 1860 Galloway traveled to Haiti to help recruit to prepare for a military invasion of the American south.

In 1861, Galloway returned to the US and began work as a spy for the Union under Major General Benjamin Butler. Galloway was captured at Vicksburg, and after his release or escape he made his way to New Bern. In 1863 he married Martha Ann Dixon in Beaufort. That same year he was able to free his mother from enslavement in Wilmington, and brought her to Union-held New Bern.

The Union Army needed troops and General Order No 143 of the US War Department, dated May 22, 1863, established the Bureau of Colored Troops to recruit and train freedmen and emancipated slaves to fight. Galloway began recruiting African Americans to enlist in the Union Army, but Galloway had four conditions that must be met before blacks in New Bern would enlist. They were to receive equal pay to that of the Massachusetts Regiments, the Army had to provide for their families who were mainly refugees, the Freedmen’s Bureau had to set up schools to teach their children to read and write, and the US government had to agree that if they were captured, they would have the rights as legitimate military prisoners of war. These conditions were ultimately agreed to, and within days of that, hundreds of recruits arrived. The new regiment was designated the First North Carolina Volunteers (later becoming the 35th US Colored Troops).

Galloway soon became an important and influential political leader. In May of 1864, he was part of a delegation of five black leaders who met with Abraham Lincoln advocating for suffrage for African Americans. He was one of 144 black leaders who attended the National Convention of Colored Citizens of the US, the most important gathering of African American leaders during the Civil War. By 1865 Galloway had organized a state chapter and five local chapters of the National Equal Rights League. He also helped to lead a freed people’s convention. In 1868, despite threats from the Ku Klux Klan, Galloway ran for the state senate in the first election in which Blacks were eligible to hold state office. He was one of three Black senators and seventeen Black representatives in the NC General Assembly. Galloway was able to vote for the 14th and 15th Amendments during his tenure.

Abraham Galloway was an advocate for African Americans, not only in New Bern, but throughout the north and south. As a testimony to his influence, six thousand people attended his funeral.

Samuel J. Battle, born January 16, 1883 in New Bern, was recorded as the largest baby born in NC at 16 pounds. He would grow to be 6”3” tall and over 280 pounds. By the time he died in New York City on August 7, 1966, he was a legend in the NYC Police Department.

Samuel Battle’s parents were born into slavery, and he was one of nine siblings. As a teenager, he was caught stealing money from the safe of his boss, R.H. Smith. His boss did not press charges because of his friendship with Battle’s father, a Methodist Minister. Smith predicted Battle would be in prison within a year, but Samuel decided to do everything in his power to prove him wrong.

Samuel Battle went north and had several jobs, including as a $32/month red cap at Grand Central Terminal. Battle was influenced by his brother in law, Moses Cobb, who was hired as a police officer for the City of Brooklyn. Samuel also decided that he wanted to become a police officer as it would provide him the ability to support his young family. Samuel J Battle became the first African American to be appointed to the 10,000 member force after the police forces merged in 1898. He was originally turned down because a police surgeon declared he had a heart murmur, but after several prominent blacks protested to city officials, he was given another medical exam which he passed. He officially joined the force on June 28, 1911 at the age of 28. He was assigned to the West 68th Street station house, but suffered years of silent treatment from his fellow officers. He was not allowed to bunk with the other officers at the station house, so a mattress was moved to the second floor where the American flag was stored. While in that room, he studied for the Sergeant’s exam. Although he was passed over three times, he would later become the first African American police sergeant (1926), lieutenant (1936) and the first African American parole commissioner (1941). Mr. Battle served on that commission for ten years, retiring in 1951.

While on his first beat in the San Juan Hill section of the city (where Lincoln Center is today), tourist buses would stop and point him out. He was soon moved to Harlem, where he lived. In 1919, Battle rescued a white police officer during a battle with rioters at 135th and Lenox Avenue. In 1935 Battle helped to quell a riot in Harlem which was started by the arrest of a 16 year old shoplifter.

Samuel Battle retired from the New York City Police Force in 1951 at 68. He was the highest-ranking African American on the force at that time. In 2009, the corner of West 135th Street and Lenox Avenue in New York was renamed Samuel J. Battle Plaza in honor of his achievements. That street corner marked the location where Battle saved the white officer’s life during a racial skirmish in 1919.

Photo of Samuel J. Battle and his granddaughter Yvonne at Parole Commission swearing in 1941