Great Frost

Plague strikes Germany, Russia, Scandinavia and Turkey from 1709 through 1710.

Europe's coldest period in five hundred years begins during the night of January 6, 1709, lasting three months and with its effects felt for the entire year.

In France, the coast of the Atlantic and the Seine River freeze, crops fail, and twenty-four thousand Parisians die.

William Derham records in Upminster, near London, a low of −12 °C (10 °F) on the night of January 5, 1709, the lowest he had ever measured since he started taking readings in 1697.

Derham's contemporaries in the weather observation field in Europe likewise record lows down to −15 °C (5 °F).

Derham writes in Philosophical Transactions: "I believe the Frost was greater (if not more universal also) than any other within the Memory of Man." (Derham, W. (1708/1709), "The History of the Great Frost in the Last Winter 1703 and 1708/9", Philosophical Transactions (1683–1775) 26: 454–478, JSTOR 103288).

This winter event has drawn the attention of modern day climatologists in the European Union's Millennium Project because they are presently unable to correlate the known causes of cold weather in Europe today with weather patterns documented in 1709.

According to Dennis Wheeler, a climatologist at the University of Sunderland: "Something unusual seems to have been happening".

Françoise-Marie de Bourbon, the Duchess of Orleans, is said to have written a letter to her great aunt in Germany describing how she was still shivering from cold and could barely hold her pen despite having a roaring fire next to her, the door shut, and her entire person wrapped in furs.

She wrote, "Never in my life have I seen a winter such as this one." (Pain, Stephanie (7 February 2009), "1709: The year that Europe froze", New Scientist.)

Germans have trickled into North American colonies since their earliest days.

The first mass migration, however, had begun in 1708.

Queen Anne's government has sympathy for the Protestant Germans and has invited them to go to the colonies and work in trade for passage.

Official correspondence in British records shows a total of thirteen thousand one hundred and forty-six refugees traveled down the Rhine and from Amsterdam to England in the summer of 1709.

More than thirty-five hundred of these are returned from England either because they are Roman Catholic or at their own request.

Henry Jones quotes an entry in a churchbook by the Pastor of Dreieichenhain that states a total of fifteen thousand three hundred and thirteen Germans left their villages in 1709 “for the so-called New America and, of course, Carolina.”

The flood of immigration has overwhelmed English resources, resulting in major disruptions, overcrowding, famine, disease and the death of a thousand or more Palatines.

It appears the entire Palatinate will be emptied before a halt can be called to emigration.

Many reasons have been given to explain why so many families had left their homes for an unknown land.

Knittle summarizes them: “(1) war devastation, (2) heavy taxation, (3) an extraordinarily severe winter, (4) religious quarrels, but not persecutions, (5) land hunger on the part of the elderly and desire for adventure on the part of the young, (6) liberal advertising by colonial proprietors, and finally (7) the benevolent and active cooperation of the British government.” (Knittle, Walter Allen. Early eighteenth century Palatine emigration. A British government redemptioner project to manufacture naval stores. Philadelphia (PA), 1937.)

No doubt the biggest impetus had been the harsh, cold winter that preceded their departure.

Birds had frozen in mid-air, casks of wine, livestock, whole vineyards had been destroyed by the unremitting cold.

With what little was left of their possessions, the refugees had made their way on boats down the Rhine to Amsterdam, where they had remained until the English government decided what to do about them.

Ships were finally dispatched for them across the English Channel, and the Palatines arrived in London, where they waited longer while the British government considered its options.

So many arrived that the government had created a winter camp for them outside the city walls.

A few were settled in England, a few more may have been sent to Jamaica and Nassau, but the greatest numbers are sent to Ireland, Carolina and especially, New York in the summer of 1710.

They are obligated to work off their passage.

The Reverend Joshua Kocherthal had paved the way in 1709, with a small group of fifty who settled in Newburgh, New York, on the banks of the Hudson River. (A census of these villages on May 1, 1711, shows eleven hundred and ninety-four on the east side and five hundred and eighty-three on the west side. The total number of families is three hundred and forty-two and one hundred and eighty-five, respectively.)

About three hundred and fifty Palatines had remained in New York City, and some settled in New Jersey.

The severity of the winter of 1708-1709 is thought to be an important factor in the emigration of the German Palatines from central Europe.

France is particularly hard hit by the winter, with the subsequent famine estimated to have caused six hundred thousand deaths by the end of 1710.

Because the famine occurs during wartime, there are contemporary nationalist claims that there were no deaths from starvation in the kingdom of France in 1709.

Nearly twenty-eight hundred Palatine German emigrants in the summer of 1710 are transported in ten ships by Queen Anne's government to New York, the largest single group of immigrants before the Revolutionary War.

By comparison, Manhattan at this time has only six thousand people.

Because of their refugee status and weakened condition, as well as shipboard diseases, they have a high rate of fatality.

Another three hundred-some Palatines make it to the Carolinas.

The Germans are employed initially in the production of naval stores along the Hudson River near Peekskill.

Settlement on the east side (East Camp) of the Hudson River is accomplished as a result of Governor Hunter's negotiations with Robert Livingston, who owns Livingston Manor in what is now Columbia County, New York. (This is not the town now known as Livingston Manor on the west side of the Hudson River).

Livingston is anxious to have his lands developed.

The Livingstons will benefit for many years from the revenues they receive as a result of this business venture.

West Camp, on the other hand, is located on land the Crown had recently "repossessed" as an "extravagant grant."

Pastors from both Lutheran and Reformed churches will quickly begin to serve the camps and create extensive records of these early settlers long before the state of New York is established or keeps records.

The Graffenrieds, a well-to-do patrician family, had originally established themselves in the neighborhood of Bern at the time of the founding of the city on the Aar river in 1191 by Berchtold V, Duke of Zaringen.

Christoph von Graffenried was born November 15, 1661 at the family home, Schloss Worb, in Worb, in the German-speaking part of the Canton of Bern in Switzerland, the eldest son of Anton von Graffenried (1639–1730) and Katarina Jenner (?-1669).

Graffenried on April 25th, 1684, had married Regina Tscharner (1665–1731), who also comes from an accomplished and respected family, her father, Beat Lewis Tscharner, having been a member of the Assembly and her grandfather, Samuel Tscharner, having been Governor and later Mayor of Chillon.

Regina and Christoph have four sons and seven daughters.

He had in 1702 acquired the position as bailiff of Yverdon.

Graffenried had met Franz Ludwig Michel, who had discovered silver mines in Virginia and owns land in the New World.

Telling Graffenried what glorious places North Carolina and Virginia are, he has advised him to move to North Carolina.

With the idea of paying off his debts and making money on the cheap land in North Carolina, Graffenried had left his debts to his father and secretly departed for London so that he could see this New World.

When in London, Graffenried had met with John Lawson, the Surveyor General of North Carolina, who is publishing a book entitled A Voyage to Carolina.

Lawson had promised to show Graffenried and his settlers a perfect place to establish a community.

Graffenried had in 1709 met with the Lords Proprietors of Carolina, who have granted to him ten thousand acres (forty square kilometers ) on the Neuse and Cape Fear Rivers.

They also have given him the title Baron of Bernberg, after the settlement he is supposed to found.

Consequently, Graffenried had gathered a group of Germans from the Palatine region and Swiss immigrants who have faced hardships in their own countries and want to start over in North Carolina.

He sails in 1710 to North Carolina.

On the sea, the settlers had been attacked by French privateers, who had stripped them of everything they brought.

Once in the New World, the settlers had sold everything that remained, except the clothes on their backs.

John Lawson had taken them to a site at the junction of the Trent and Neuse Rivers, which they name New Bern.

The first season, the settler's crops do not do well.

Graffenried returns to Europe to get supplies and additional settlers.

He returns to the colony unscathed.

Graffenried had ordered that the layout of the town was made into the shape of a cross, although the town is not in the shape today due to growth of the town and towns surrounding it.

In addition to a lack of food and supplies, there is great tension between the settlers and the Tuscarora of the Neuse River region.

Unknown to the settlers, their new settlement is on the site of an old Tuscarora village.