NEW BERN, TEXAS. New Bern was a small settlement of Swiss immigrants on County Road 414 thirty-seven miles north of Austin in east Williamson County. Immigration to the rolling blackland farms began in the 1880s, when the settlers named the community for their native Bern. A small village formed around St. Paul's Lutheran Church, which was built in 1893. A public school was opened in 1900, and New Bern Helvetia Lodge Hall served as a center for social activities after its completion in 1908. Residents erected a large wooden church in 1912, which they moved to Wuthrich Hill in 1948, when the two congregations joined to form the Prince of Peace Church. The local school was merged with that of Thrall in 1949. In 1986 only a cemetery remained to mark the community center.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Clara Stearns Scarbrough, Land of Good Water: A Williamson County History (Georgetown, Texas: Williamson County Sun Publishers, 1973).
