Evening star., 1940-05-19
Sons OF American Revolution Find Meeting Ground Voteess District
Rare Map of
Capital Area
Is Revealed
Swiss.Teuton COLONY
Here Failed to
Materialize

By Joseph S. Edeerton.

missing silver mlne, Cne une |
speeches" of the Surveyor General
of the Royal Colony of North Caro-
lima and the fine promises" of the
Lords Proprietors of that colony
what now is the National Capital
might have become a Swiss-Ger-
man colony in ITO and probably
would have borne the name of
New Bern"
The unfolding of an obscure !
chapter in American history, un-
known to previous historians who
have dealt with the National Capt.
tai and the adjacent country, re-
veals that in 1912 one of the most |
notable of the Southern American
colonizers, with view to establish
ing a colony site on the Potomac
River, explored almost exactly the
same territory studied 78 years later
by George Washington in his selec-
ton of the present site for the Ma
tional Capital.
Instead of coming to this area,
however, the colonists. led by Baron
Christoph Won Graffenried of Bern,
oWlOLCll oCtblCo Oll tAlC SlUC vi
what now is New Bern. N. C. When
that colony was broken up as a
result of famine and Indian wars,
the baron, reverting to his original
plan of establishing a colony on
the Potomac, explored the river
valley from the site of what now
is Anacostia to an Indian village
which he called "Canavest," about
40 miles above Great Falls.
The results of his, exploration,
which have remained buried under
the dust of centuries, are in one
of the most accurate of the early
maps showing the local area and
series of travel notes which reveal
one of the clearest pictures yet dis
closed of the local country and its
inhabitants. Neither map nor notes
ever before have been made avail
able to the general public. accord
ing to officials of the Library of
Congress. and, until recent years,
their existence has not been sus-
pected by historians.
Shown on Map.
The map shows, in what now is
downtown Washington, the indica-
ton OF a group of dwellings marked,
in French, Village where is the
Minister of Turkebosem"-no ex-
planation of which has been offered
by any historian. Rock Greek is
identified as "R. d'Ore'-the River
of Gold, an indication of a belief IN
the presence of precious metals
subsequently justified by the work
ing of gold mines in the Great Falls
region
Graffenried visited the plantation
of Col. Bell zone of the pioneer
Beall family near what now is
Georgetown and priced the land
for colony purposes. He records
in his notes that he could have
acquired 800 acres in what was to
become the Georgetown area west
of Rock Greek for 1853 pounds.
sterling. which at the then existing
value of the pound meant modern
equivalent of about $2.235.
Very suitable and convenient for
our design" Baron Won Graffenried
said in his notes of this Georgetown
site
The baron also was greatly i'm
pressed with the suitability of the
area just below the Potomac River
rapids and describes this area at
some length. He proposed the es-
tablishment of plantation on the
Virginia shore at the head of navi-
cation. He also liked what is now
Roosevelt Island.
Only his failure to find silver ore,
which had been described as exist
ing in the "Senantoah" Mountains,
now the Blue Ridge, by an earlier
fellow-Swiss explorer, Franz Louis
Michel. prevented the migration to
the Potomac of the survivors of the
New Bern colony, most OF them
miners. and their families.
Baron Won Graffenried visited
Sugar Loaf Mountain, which he is
credited with having named, and
described a medicinal hot spring
there, which was much used by the
Indians in the treatment of their
ills.
The "Senantoah" Mountains-the
name obviously was the "Shenan-
doah" of today-he described as
being beyond Virginia" not "be-
yond Pennsylvania" as he had sup
posed.
German Migration.
Graffenried's exploration of the
Potomac River was due to the
wars of the Spanish succession in
the Lower Palatinate" of Germany
in 1700. These upheavals led to
the migration to America in the
18th and 18th centuries of large
numbers of German and Swiss
refugees. Baron Won Graffenried
and his colony came to America
almost on the crest of the great
German migration of 1709. More