Graffenried left three manuscripts (maintained in libraries in Switzerland) which he wrote after his return from America. There are differences between the one German and the two French manuscripts. Vincent H. Todd, using these manuscripts, translated the German version into English and compared the French versions to this. Differences were given in a series of notes. The result was published as the book, " Christoph von Graffenried's Account of the Founding of New Bern ", published by the North Carolina Historical Commission in 1920. Prof. Todd had earlier published a smaller book, " Baron Christoph von Graffenried's New Bern Adventures ", in 1913.
The material quoted in the last note was from the German version. In the French, Graffenried notes with respect to his departure from Switzerland, "I departed in the firm resolution of returning no more."
I have commented on the difficulty of placing events in time based on the comments of Graffenried. Though Graffenried says his decision to leave Switzerland was based in part on his conversations with Michel, I am not convinced that Michel had returned to Switzerland. There seem to be letters written by Michel in December of 1708 in America. And in the spring of 1709, Michel was in London. He could hardly have returned from America, gone to Bern, and then gone back to London by April. Graffenried could have read Michel's reports in Switzerland and talked to people who were associated with Michel. Later in London, Graffenried was working with Michel and Graffenried was strongly influenced by what Michel had to say. In Bern, Graffenried had had the opportunity to read a few books and pamphlets which described America. So the decision to leave Switzerland was probably influenced by Michel but in an indirect way, not a direct way; however, this conclusion does not affect the overall result but I expound on it to show the difficulty of interpreting Graffenried's remarks.
I believe that Graffenried departed from Switzerland for London without a clear idea of what he was going to do or how he was going to do it. He explains in the French version that he had been impressed with the conversations he had thirty years earlier in London (without telling the reader that they had occurred then). He says that he had reached the resolve of going to America except that his relatives (his father) demanded that he come home. Graffenried cites these thirty year old discussions as a reason for leaving Switzerland.
Before Graffenried and Michel were together in London, Michel was pursuing the memorial that Ritter had written a few years earlier (see the earlier notes). Ritter had been working with the English envoy to Bern. No one in London was active in working with the people who had to be convinced. Michel had written from America that what was needed was someone in London who could be an advocate and negotiator for the colonization plan. (Michel and Ritter were interested in colonization and not in mining. The emphasis on mining did not arise until later when Graffenried was involved.)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.