by Edward Ellis, Special Correspondent
In 1764 – 258 years ago – New Bern was a town of one hundred houses and five hundred residents. According to a newspaper account, nearly every local citizen turned out for the festive Christmas arrival of Lieutenant Governor William Tryon and his lovely and vivacious wife, Margaret Wake Tryon.
A verbal war had been raging between Wilmington and New Bern over the location of the capital for the Colony of North Carolina. Then-Governor Arthur Dobbs was not a fan of New Bern. Quite vocal in his distaste for it, he preferred Wilmington as the seat of government. But with Dobbs’s time in office waning, leaders here in the town of two rivers placed their bets on Tryon.
The carriage bearing the Tryons from Cape Fear rolled into town Christmas Eve escorted by a mounted entourage of New Bern grandees who had gone out to meet it. With a raucous crowd gawking and shouting cheers of welcome, the battery at Union Point blasted a 19-gun salute. The festivities continued as the power couple was whisked to fine lodgings on East Front Street. The newspaper said, “In the evening the town was handsomely illuminated, bonfires were lighted, and plenty of liquor given to the populace.”
Christmas was splendidly celebrated on Tuesday that year. The next day the wooing continued. At a gathering that included all the town’s officers and aldermen, Recorder Richard Fenner read out a “congratulatory address” to the Tryons. In response to the welcome, the lieutenant governor said: “I shall retain the properest sense of the warm assurances that the Corporation of this Borough gives me.”
That night a grand ball was held in the magnificent, beautifully lit, and recently-completed brick courthouse. A hundred ladies and gentlemen of the town celebrated with “all imaginable agreement and satisfaction” before moving upstairs at ten o’clock to the “Long Room over the Ball-Room” for a sumptuous banquet.
That evening, it is said, “none outshone Mrs. Tryon.” The town fell in love with her. And the Tryons fell in love with New Bern as well. A few years later, as governor, Tryon made New Bern his home and capital and built his famous “palace” here.