JASP 2025: The History of New Bern, North Carolina
- Sarah Hurley
- 6 days ago
- 4 min read
Welcome back, dear readers! As many of you know by now, JASP 2025: Sensibility and Domesticity, will take place June 19-22, 2025, in historic New Bern, North Carolina. This year, we will be focusing on Austen's first published novel, Sense and Sensibility—considering the birth of her career as a published writer and taking a transatlantic look at the world into which she was born. Our program will explore medicine, birth, and domestic arts in Regency England and colonial North Carolina and celebrate the 250th anniversary of Austen’s birth in 1775. We can’t wait to see you there!
In the meantime, enjoy this (very brief!) guide to the rich history of New Bern, North Carolina, where JASP will be hosting this year’s symposium.
As the second-oldest colonial town in North Carolina and former state capitol, New Bern was settled in 1710 by Swiss and Palatine immigrants and named after Bern, the capital of Switzerland. Before the Europeans arrived, Native Americans of the Tuscarora tribe resided along New Bern’s riverbanks in a village they called Chattoka. Rich in beauty, culture, and history, New Bern soon earned the moniker “the Athens of the South” in American social and political circles.
Three decades after the founding of New Bern, four large lots on Pollock Street in the downtown district were designated for religious purposes, eventually hosting a church and a school. However, because the Church Assembly preferred to remove the school from the downtown business district, it was relocated to other lots along New and Hancock Streets. After the American Revolution, the school reorganized and rebranded as the New Bern Academy, which still exists today as a museum—just four blocks away from Tryon Palace, the home of JASP 2025! The Academy served as a hospital and recruitment station for the 35th USCT during the American Civil War, as well as a functioning institution of New Bern’s graded school system from 1899 to 1972.
New Bern’s City Hall is also located on one of the lots initially belonging to the church, purchased in 1891. Originally constructed as a Federal Courthouse, Customs Office, and Post Office, the building was completed in 1897 and came under city ownership nearly four decades later. Sessions of Federal Court were held in the upstairs courtroom, which is still used today for conducting official quasi-governmental business.
City Hall boasts the only Romanesque Revival architecture in the area and enjoys its listing on the National Register of Historic Places. Initially designed without a tower or clock, the building was soon re-conceived to incorporate such changes. Architect James Knox Taylor—supervising Architect of the United States Department of the Treasury from 1897 to 1912—orchestrated the clock tower’s current appearance, including the installation of a large Seth Thomas four-face clock.
Furthermore, New Bern was the first city in North Carolina, and one of the first in the nation, to charter a fire company. The New Bern Volunteer Fire Department, as it is known today, was born of a bitter rivalry between two competing fire companies: the Atlantic Hook & Ladder Company and the New Bern Steam Fire Engine Company No. 1.
The first chartered fire-fighting organization in the city, the Atlantic Hook & Ladder Company, formed in May 1845 but became temporarily inactive when its members began volunteering for military service at the start of the American Civil War. The New Bern Steam Fire Engine Company No. 1 was organized in January of 1865 by Union soldiers during the occupation of New Bern. According to the New Bern Firemen’s Museum’s history page:
The rivalry escalated when Union troops received a hand pump from the North. This contraption reached its maximum output when eight men exerted their weight on each end of the pump’s cross-beam lever. A 16-man crew pulled the vehicle to the scene of the blaze. The pump drew water from one of New Bern’s strategically located wells at Middle and Pollock Streets, Broad and Middle Streets, South Front Street, Bern Street (in Five Points), and North Craven Street at Pelletier’s Knitting Mill. If the fire was near the Neuse or Trent Rivers, water was pumped from them. After pulling and pumping this Yankee apparatus for about three years, the New Bern Steam Fire Engine Company No. 1 persuaded the Town Council to purchase [a Lysander Button Steam Fire Engine], the city’s first steam fire engine, which arrived in 1868.
The rivalry between Hook & Ladder (nicknamed “the Atlantics” and Steam Fire Engine Company (nicknamed “the Buttons”) escalated when both companies competed against each other in firefighting competitions throughout the state, each company setting their fair share of world records. To this day, the Button Company holds the world record for running quick steam in a minute and forty-six seconds. The rivalry continued until 1928, when the Town Council moved both companies to a central fire station downtown.
For one last tidbit of New Bern history, in 1893, local pharmacist and drug store owner Caleb Bradham invented “Brad’s Drink,” made from a mix of sugar, water, caramel, lemon oil, nutmeg, and other natural additives, which became an overnight sensation. In 1898, he rebranded as “Pepsi-Cola,” which today enjoys its status as one of America’s most beloved soft drinks. Initially marketed as a “healthy” cola meant to aid digestion, Pepsi comprised 240 franchises in twenty-four states by 1910, and the Pepsi-Cola Company held their first Bottler Convention in New Bern that same year. Today, you can visit the Birthplace of Pepsi Cola Store at the site of Bradham’s old pharmacy, right on the corner of Middle and Pollock Streets in downtown New Bern.
Join us again in the coming weeks for more information on the history and attractions of New Bern, NC, where we’ll be hosting JASP 2025. The Jane Austen Summer Program is designed to appeal to anyone with a passion for all things Jane Austen. Attendees include people from all walks of life, as well as established scholars, high school teachers, and students from middle school through graduate school. Register for JASP 2025 today!
JASP 2025 is partially supported by a grant from North Carolina Humanities.
Information sourced from New Bern: City History, New Bern Academy Museum, New Bern Firemen’s Museum, and Visit New Bern: Birthplace of Pepsi.
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