The Swiss Regret Leaving Switzerland
Purysburg, South Carolina
John Peter Pury, a native of Neufchatel in Switzerland, left his native country to visit Carolina to view the lands. Afterward, he returned to Great Britain and contracted to encourage settlement. The government agreed to give lands and four hundred pounds sterling to every hundred influential men that Pury transported from Switzerland to Carolina.
Immediately, one hundred and seventy poor Switzers agreed to follow him and were transported to South Carolina. Not long afterward, two hundred more came over and joined them.
The governor, agreeable to instructions, allotted forty thousand acres of lands for the use of the Swiss settlement on the northeast side of Savannah River, and a town was marked out for their accommodation, which he called Purysburgh, from the name of the principal promoter of the settlement.
Mr. Bignion, a Swiss minister they had engaged to go with them, having received Episcopal ordination from the bishop of London, settled among them for their religious instruction.
The Governor and his council were happy with the acquisition of such a settlement, allotted each person his separate tract of land, and encouraged the people in every way they could.
The poor Swiss emigrants began their labors with uncommon zeal and courage, highly elevated by the idea of possessing landed estates and hopeful of future success. However, the change in climate to a warm climate affected the workers' health.
Several became sickened and died, and others found all the hardships of colonization falling heavily upon their backs. They became discontented with the provisions allowed them and complained to the government.* Meanwhile, the period for receiving the bounty expired before they had made such progress in cultivation as to raise sufficient provisions for themselves and their families.
The spirit of murmur crept into the poor Swiss settlement, and the people blamed Pury for deceiving them.
According to the new plan adopted in England for the more speedy population and settlement of the province, the governor had instructions to mark out eleven townships, in square plats, on the sides of rivers, consisting each of twenty thousand acres, and to divide the lands within them into shares of fifty acres for each man, woman, and child, that should come over to occupy and improve them.
Each township was to form a parish, and all the inhabitants were to have an equal right to the river. So soon as the parish should increase to the number of a hundred families, they were to have the right to send two members of their own election to the assembly and to enjoy the same privileges as the other parishes already established.
Accordingly, they marked eleven townships in the following situations: two on River Alatamaha, two on Savannah, two on Santee, one on Pedee, one on Waccamaw, one on Wateree, and one on Black Rivers. The old planters, now acquiring every year greater strength of hands by the large importation of African slaves and extensive credit from England, began to turn their attention more closely than ever to the lands of the province. A spirit of emulation broke out among them for securing tracks of the richest ground, especially those most conveniently situated for navigation.
Each settler was to pay four shillings a year for every hundred acres of land, except for the first ten years, during which they were to be rent-free. Governor Johnson issued a warrant to St. John, surveyor general of the province, empowering him to go and mark out those townships.
By 1736, there were some four hundred fifty French and German-speaking Swiss Protestants from Neuchatel and Geneva, Switzerland who settled in the new town of Purysburg. However, difficulties continued as the settlers complained of disease, unhealthy conditions, and overlapping land grants.
The size of the town of Purysburg diminished as the disenchanted Swiss and Germans moved into other regions of South Carolina and crossed the Savannah River into the Georgia Colony.
*James Edward Oglethorpe also encountered a warmer climate that affected Englishmen who were unaccustomed to hard work in the blazing sun.
Source: Historical Collections of South Carolina by B. R. Carroll, Vol. 1. (1836)
