by Edward Ellis, Special Correspondent
Anything can happen. That’s the principal lesson of history. Refined to its essence, history teaches that everything imaginable and everything unimaginable has happened and will happen again.
This month’s one-hundredth birthday of the New Bern Historical Society – Cheers! – got us musing on this point and there couldn’t be a better example than this city itself.
To meditate upon the idea, stand some pretty afternoon at the corner of Middle Street and Pollock Street with your hand resting on the Lady Blessington cannon and consider …
• New Bern was overwhelmed and nearly destroyed in 1711 by an uprising of the
indigenous people who occupied the Neuse River territory before the coming of
the Europeans!
• One of the leading lights of the town, Dr. Alexander Gaston, was murdered on the
riverfront – before the eyes of his wife and children – by a British officer during a raid
at the time of the American Revolution!
• New Bern became the capital of the state of North Carolina!
• George Washington visited!
• A former governor of North Carolina, Richard Spaight, was gunned down in a duel
with a political foe in 1802! On a Sunday!
• Five dozen shiploads of Union soldiers attacked and seized New Bern in 1862 and
held it captive for four years!
• Pepsi was invented downtown!
• A 1922 fire destroyed a quarter of the city and could have burned everything!
And that’s just the shortlist. Seems like there’s never a dull moment. But through it all, thousands upon thousands of New Bernians and their families have mainly lived rewarding and productive lives here on the banks of the two rivers … and made the place a wonder for all who visit.
Nevertheless, the bucolic pace of everyday life can lull us into forgetting history’s essential theme: Anything can happen – and probably will.