| Good Neighbors |
| Purrysburg, South Carolina ia across the Savannah River from New Ebenezer, Georgia. In 1731, the King of England granted land on the Savannah River to Swiss colonizer Jean Pierre Purry. Hundreds of Swiss colonists arrived with the intention of establishing a silk trade, but malaria and other problems plagued the colonists, and the settlement vanished around the time of the American Revolution, after it served as the first headquarters of the American army under General Benjamin Lincoln. Its river landing and the cemetery site are still in use. |
| Neufchatel, Switzerland wine merchant Jean Pierre Purry. Purry was born in 1675, and left home to seek his fortune in Dutch East Indies around 1713, venturing as far as South Australia in search of new lands to colonize. In 1717, he presented a plan to the Dutch East India Company for a Swiss settlement in Australia. In 1718, he published a pamphlet in Amsterdam which advanced an odd theory that the best places on the globe for human habitation were at 33 degrees north and south latitude. But Dutch colonial officials rejected him, and so he tried to convince the English of his theory. In 1724, he wrote to the duke of Newcastle proposing a Swiss settlement in America near 33 degrees north/south latitude, suggesting that the settlement be called "Georgina" in honor of King George I. He found a willing reception with the Lords Proprietors of Carolina, and they initially agreed to transport Purry’s proposed Swiss immigrants to America at the Proprietors’ expense. |
| Purry advertised in the Swiss Cantons for volunteers to immigrate to America in 1726 and found two hundred people in Geneva and one hundred in Neufchatel. Alas, the proprietors reneged on their promise of transport and Purry’s Swiss creditors backed out. The would-be immigrants were broke, hungry and mad. However, when the Lords Proprietors finally relinquished control of the South Carolina colony to the crown in 1729, Purry's plan had a new chance at success. The first royal governor of South Carolina, Robert Johnson, was instructed to establish "townships" on the South Carolina frontier and settle them with European protestants, and in 1739, Purry’s plan for a Swiss settlement was revived. By 1731, Purry was in South Carolina. The name chosen for the new town on the banks of the Savannah River was Purrysburg and two years later most of the new Swiss settlers arrived in Purrysburg. By 1736, there were 100 houses and as many as 450 settlers. |
| But like old Ebenezer, the town was not ideally suited for farming and the climate was unhealthy. Soon the settlers were plagued with Malaria, heat, insects and disease. Over the next decade, many of the settlers sought better lives in Georgia, where the new town of Savannah (1733) and the Salzberger settlement at Ebenezer (1736) had recently been established. Purry died in 1736. |
| In 1731-32, 152 colonists were brought over by J P Purry: On 11/1/1732 61 men, women, and children on the "Peter and James;" on 12/13/1732, 42 on the "Shoreham;" on 12/15/1732, 49 on the "Purrysburg." Purry later [1734] brought 260 to Charles Town. Purrysburg proper encompassed 400 acres on the South Carolina side of the Savannah River, 20 miles upstream from Savannah. Its inhabitants were "chiefly Swiss and Salzburgers." |