Appalachian Community Histories – Bernstadt, Laurel County: The Swiss Colony That Took Root in Appalachian Kentucky
In the hills of Laurel County, a few miles west of London, Kentucky, stands one of the more unusual immigration stories in Appalachian history. Bernstadt was not simply a roadside community that grew slowly around a church, store, or post office. It began as a planned Swiss colony, promoted across the Atlantic by men who believed the mountain land of southeastern Kentucky could become a new home for families leaving the crowded farms and economic troubles of Switzerland.
The result was Bernstadt, a settlement whose name remembered Bern, Switzerland, while its people worked the rocky soils, forested ridges, and creek valleys of Laurel County. The Kentucky Historical Society marker for Swiss Colony Bernstadt identifies the settlement as founded in 1881 and calls it Kentucky’s largest foreign colony. It also connects the colony to Swiss farm troubles, high land prices, and the work of Paul Schenk and Otto Bruner, whose name also appears in records as Otto Brunner.
Bernstadt’s story belongs to Appalachian history because it shows how the mountains were never as isolated as outsiders imagined. In the 1880s, the same Laurel County roads that carried local farmers, merchants, churchgoers, and Civil War memories also carried Swiss immigrants trying to build a new life in Kentucky.
Kentucky Looks Across the Ocean
The Swiss colony did not happen by accident. During the late nineteenth century, Kentucky officials wanted to attract European immigrants. Other states had drawn large numbers of foreign settlers, but Kentucky had not received the same attention. The state’s Bureau of Immigration and Kentucky Geological Survey helped promote the commonwealth as a place of available land, favorable climate, timber, water, and opportunity.
One of the most important surviving primary sources is Otto Brunner and John R. Procter’s 1881 German-language pamphlet, Die Schweizer-Colonie “Bernstadt” in Laurel County, Kentucky, Nord-Amerika. The Internet Archive record identifies it as an 1881 Frankfort publication connected to Brunner, Procter, the Kentucky Bureau of Immigration, and the Kentucky Geological Survey. Its running title describes “Views of the Swiss Colony Bernstadt, Laurel County, Kentucky,” showing that the colony was being presented directly to German-speaking readers as a place worth seeing and settling.
The Kentucky Geological Survey bibliography shows that Bernstadt was not mentioned in only one pamphlet. It lists a series of immigration reports tied to the Swiss colony, including Brunner’s 1881 report on Bernstadt, Brunner’s 1882 report on the impressions and results of the colony’s first year, John R. Procter’s 1882 report on the success of the Swiss colony in Laurel County, letters about the Bernstadt colony, John Blunschli’s 1884 letters concerning East Bernstadt, and Paul von Schenk’s 1886 report on Bernstadt at the beginning of its sixth year.
Those sources matter because they show Bernstadt in real time, not as a later memory. They reveal a state-backed effort to sell Kentucky to European settlers and to make Laurel County seem like a practical, promising place for Swiss families to begin again.
Why Laurel County?
The National Register of Historic Places nomination for the First Evangelical Reformed Church, also known as Swiss Colony Church, gives one of the clearest explanations of why Bernstadt was chosen. The nomination says Swiss immigrants came to Bernstadt in the late nineteenth century and describes the colony as the first systematic planned emigration project from a foreign country to Kentucky during that period, and probably the largest recruited enterprise of its type in the state.
The same document explains why the Laurel County site appealed to the Swiss promoters and settlers. They praised the climate, water supply, springs, summer dew, clover, grasses, cattle raising, and cheesemaking possibilities. The coming railroad also mattered because it promised a connection to Louisville and wider markets. Land price was another major factor. The nomination states that Swiss buyers rarely paid more than one dollar per acre and did not intend to go deeply into debt. By 1882, according to the same record, the settlers had secured about 39,000 acres and numbered approximately 562 people.
To the people promoting Bernstadt, this was the language of opportunity. To the families arriving from Switzerland, it meant hard work. The land was not an easy European farm already cleared and waiting. It was Appalachian upland, wooded, uneven, and demanding. Every acre had to be made into a home through cutting, building, planting, fencing, and surviving.
Brunner, Schenk, Procter, and the Colony Plan
The Bernstadt project brought together Swiss organizers and Kentucky officials. The National Register nomination traces the beginning of the promotion to February 1881, when Otto Bruner and Paul Schenck visited Laurel County with John R. Proctor, the State Geologist of Kentucky, who also held the title of State Commissioner of Immigration. Proctor had invited them to Kentucky with colonization in mind, and they had spent time investigating Kentucky and Tennessee before selecting Laurel County by mid-1881.
After choosing the site, the organizers began buying land and purchasing seed, equipment, provisions, and furniture in Louisville. By the summer of 1881, emigration was underway. Some of the earliest settlers were Swiss families who had first intended to settle in West Virginia but became dissatisfied there. Soon, other families followed directly from Switzerland. By January 1886, the National Register nomination states that at least 800 settlers had arrived.
Modern scholarship also places Bernstadt within a larger pattern of Swiss immigration and colonization. Jan Sparkman’s 2022 article, “Bernstadt: The Last Swiss Colony,” published in the Swiss American Historical Society Review, describes the Laurel County settlement as the final attempt by Swiss immigrants to develop an independent colony in the United States. Sparkman also emphasizes the role of Kentucky’s Bureau of Immigration and the intervention of Otto Brunner, Paul Schenk, and Karl Imobersteg.
The names in the records sometimes vary in spelling, but the larger picture is clear. Bernstadt was planned, promoted, recruited, and documented. It was both a mountain community and an international project.
Building a Church in the Colony
For many Appalachian communities, the church became the center of local identity. Bernstadt was no different. The First Evangelical Reformed Church, commonly known as Swiss Colony Church, became one of the most visible reminders of the settlement.
The National Register nomination identifies the church as located on Kentucky State Route 80 in Bernstadt and gives its historic name as The First Evangelical Reformed Church, with Swiss Colony Church as the common name. It describes the building as a frame church constructed in 1884, measuring 31 feet by 21 feet, with a small tower containing the original church bell.
The church was not merely an old building. It was a surviving piece of the colony’s first generation. The National Register document states that the congregation first organized on July 24, 1884, construction began in October 1884, and the building was dedicated on August 1, 1891. By April 1902, the church had 196 members, including 123 adults and 73 children. The old frame church remained standing even after a later brick church was built nearby.
That little church tells the story better than almost anything else. A colony that began as a promotional plan became a living community when families worshiped, married, baptized children, buried their dead, and kept a congregation alive in the Laurel County hills.
Bernstadt and East Bernstadt
Bernstadt’s story is closely connected to East Bernstadt, but the two names should not be treated as exactly the same place. Bernstadt was the historic Swiss colony west of London. East Bernstadt developed nearby and became tied to railroads, coal, and the wider movement of Swiss families through northern Laurel County.
The Kentucky Atlas and Gazetteer describes East Bernstadt as a Laurel County community about five miles north of London. It notes that it was mainly a coal town, was home to many Swiss immigrants, and stood near other Swiss-settled places including Bernstadt. In the early twentieth century, East Bernstadt sat at the junction of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad and the Rockcastle River Railway. The Atlas also records that the Mullins post office opened in 1881 and was renamed East Bernstadt in 1904.
That railroad and coal context helps explain how the Swiss colony story spread beyond the original settlement. Some families farmed. Some found work in mines or railroad-linked communities. Some remained near the church and colony lands. Others moved through East Bernstadt, London, and surrounding Laurel County settlements. Appalachian communities often grew in layers, and Bernstadt’s Swiss history became one layer in the wider story of northern Laurel County.
The Records They Left Behind
Bernstadt is unusually rich in records for a small Appalachian community. The first reason is that it was promoted by state agencies. The second is that it was an immigrant colony with land companies, letters, church records, and family networks. The third is that descendants and historians preserved parts of the story.
The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, holds the Swiss Colonies in Tennessee and Kentucky Collection, MS-0017. Its Bernstadt-related material includes research, interview transcriptions, correspondence, licenses, land grants, wills, deeds, blueprints, and maps documenting Swiss settlement in Tennessee and Kentucky during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One file is titled “The colony Bernstadt, in Laurel county, Kentucky,” and the collection includes Laurel County material dated 1881 to 1934.
The attached research notes also point to additional local and archival sources, including Eastern Kentucky University oral histories, Laurel County Historical Society holdings, Laurel County newspapers, the Laurel County Public Library Digital Archive, Robert M. Rennick’s Kentucky place-name research, USGS place-name data, USDA soil surveys, and Kentucky Geological Survey materials. Those notes are especially useful because Bernstadt history depends on connecting immigration records with church, land, newspaper, map, and family sources.
For descendants, these sources can do more than tell a general history. They can identify family names, land purchases, occupations, migration routes, church membership, and the ways Swiss families became part of Laurel County life.
A Colony Remembered in the Mountains
The story of Bernstadt is not only a story of success or hardship. It is both. It began with promotional language, organized immigration, and the promise that Kentucky could offer Swiss farmers a future. It continued through timbered land, church building, railroad development, coal work, family persistence, and community memory.
Bernstadt also complicates the usual picture of Appalachia. The mountains were not cut off from the world. They were tied to Europe through immigration pamphlets, state policy, land speculation, letters, and families who carried one homeland into another. Swiss settlers came to Laurel County with their language, faith, farming skills, and hopes. Over time, their descendants became part of the Appalachian landscape, not separate from it.
Today, Bernstadt’s old church, cemetery records, family names, historical markers, immigration reports, and archival collections still speak. They remind us that Appalachian history is not one single stream. It is made of Native paths, frontier roads, Civil War routes, coal lines, churchyards, immigrant colonies, and the ordinary people who tried to make a home where the mountains would let them.
Why Bernstadt Matters
Bernstadt matters because it was one of Kentucky’s most ambitious immigrant settlement projects and one of the clearest examples of planned European colonization in Appalachian Kentucky. It connects Laurel County to Switzerland, the Kentucky Bureau of Immigration, the Kentucky Geological Survey, the railroad age, local church history, and the everyday labor of families who crossed an ocean for land.
It also matters because so much of its story can still be traced through primary sources. The 1881 Brunner and Procter pamphlet, Kentucky Geological Survey immigration reports, National Register records, land papers, maps, church manuscripts, and archival collections allow Bernstadt to be studied with unusual depth.
In the end, Bernstadt was not just a Swiss colony in Kentucky. It was an Appalachian community built from migration, memory, faith, disappointment, labor, and endurance. Its history belongs beside the better-known stories of Laurel County because it shows how far people traveled to find a place in the mountains, and how deeply those mountains became part of them.
Sources & Further Reading
Brunner, Otto, John R. Procter, Kentucky Bureau of Immigration, and Kentucky Geological Survey. Die Schweizer-Colonie “Bernstadt” in Laurel County, Kentucky, Nord-Amerika. Frankfort, KY: Major, Johnston & Barrett, 1881. https://archive.org/details/dieschweizercolo00brun
Jones, Calvin P., Gloria Mills, and Jim Hays. National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form: The First Evangelical Reformed Church, also Known as Swiss Colony Church, Bernstadt, Laurel County, Kentucky. National Park Service, 1979. https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/2946f078-e31a-4472-ae01-3fa55b0795c2
Kentucky Geological Survey. Bibliography of the Kentucky Geological Survey, 1839 to 1978. Lexington: Kentucky Geological Survey, University of Kentucky. https://www.uky.edu/KGS/pdf/ic11_02.pdf
University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Betsey B. Creekmore Special Collections and University Archives. Swiss Colonies in Tennessee and Kentucky Collection, MS-0017. https://scout.lib.utk.edu/repositories/2/resources/161
University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Betsey B. Creekmore Special Collections and University Archives. “The Colony Bernstadt, in Laurel County, Kentucky.” In Swiss Colonies in Tennessee and Kentucky Collection, MS-0017. https://scout.lib.utk.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/14075
Sparkman, Jan. “Bernstadt: The Last Swiss Colony.” Swiss American Historical Society Review 58, no. 3 (2022): 34–66. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_review/vol58/iss3/3/
Swiss American Historical Society. “2022 SAHS Review.” Swiss American Historical Society. https://www.swiss-american-historical-society.org/2022-sahs-review
Kentucky Historical Society. “Swiss Colony Bernstadt.” Historical Marker Database, Kentucky Historical Society. https://history.ky.gov/markers/swiss-colony-bernstadt
Historical Marker Database. “Swiss Colony Bernstadt.” HMdb.org. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=88211
Eastern Kentucky University, William H. Berge Oral History Center. “Swiss Colony.” EKU Oral History Collections. https://oralhistory.eku.edu/collections/show/108
Eastern Kentucky University, William H. Berge Oral History Center. “Browse Interviews: Swiss Colony.” EKU Oral History Collections. https://oralhistory.eku.edu/items/browse?tags=Swiss+Colony
Laurel County Historical Society. Laurel County Historical Society. https://www.laurelkyhistory.org/
Laurel County Public Library. “Library Digital Archive.” Laurel County Public Library. https://www.laurellibrary.org/browse/digital-resource/library-digital-archive/
Laurel County Public Library. “Newspapers.” Laurel County Public Library Digital Archive. https://lcpl.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16318coll4
Kentucky Genealogical Society. “Laurel County: Researching Historic Newspapers on FamilySearch.” Kentucky Genealogical Society. https://kygs.org/laurel-county-researching-historic-newspapers-on-familysearch/
U.S. Geological Survey. “Bernstadt.” Geographic Names Information System, The National Map. https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-domestic/public/summary/510562
Morehead State University. “Robert M. Rennick Topographical Maps Collection.” ScholarWorks at Morehead State University. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_maps_all/
Morehead State University. “London 1952.” Robert M. Rennick Topographical Maps Collection. https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/rennick_maps_all/440/
Rennick, Robert M. Kentucky Place Names. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1984. https://books.google.com/books/about/Kentucky_Place_Names.html?id=ivUTAAAAYAAJ
Kentucky Atlas and Gazetteer. “East Bernstadt, Kentucky.” Kentucky Atlas and Gazetteer. https://www.kyatlas.com/ky-east-bernstadt.html
KET. “East Bernstadt.” Kentucky Life. YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6TuJn4AF0c
Yang, X. Y., and M. Stidham. Spatial Database of the Bernstadt Quadrangle, Kentucky. Lexington: Kentucky Geological Survey, 2006. https://kgs.uky.edu/kgsweb/olops/pub/kgs/mc165_12.pdf
U.S. Geological Survey. “Download GNIS Data.” U.S. Geological Survey. https://www.usgs.gov/us-board-on-geographic-names/download-gnis-data
“The Swiss in the United States.” PDF scan. https://archive.org/download/swissinunitedsta00swis/swissinunitedsta00swis.pdf
Dyche, Russell. Laurel County, Kentucky. Local history volume cited in the National Register nomination for Swiss Colony Church. Check Laurel County Historical Society or regional library holdings for access. https://www.laurelkyhistory.org/
Author Note: Bernstadt’s story shows how Appalachia was shaped not only by frontier families and coal towns, but also by immigrants who crossed the Atlantic looking for land and stability. I hope this piece helps readers see Laurel County as part of a wider world, where Swiss memory, mountain labor, and Appalachian community life met in one remarkable settlement.