Fort Germanna featured in D.C. museum exhibit

Germanna Foundation COO Steve Hein said the foundation is a member organization of the museum and has a trustee who serves on the museum’s board.

“They contacted us about whether we could be the focus of their first exhibit in that series since the Germanna Colony is one of the earlier German settlements in the country and it is the first German settlement in Virginia,” Hein said.

A series of informational panels on permanent display at the Germanna Foundation’s Locust Grove-based visitor’s center were reproduced to be displayed at the German-American Heritage Museum. Once the exhibit is concluded at the museum, the exhibit will travel to other American-Heritage Museum member clubs and organizations around the country, Hein added.

Germanna Trustee Dr. Katharine Brown spoke about Germanna’s history and the research that has been conducted by the foundation during a lecture Feb. 11. Germanna Foundation Archaeologist Dr. Eric Larsen is scheduled to give a lecture about the ongoing archaeology exploration at the Fort Germanna site on March 17th at 6:30 pm.

This Germanna exhibit “presents the story of the founding of the westernmost settlement of the British Empire, and the surprising fact that it was German speaking from the very beginning,” the museum site states. “The visitor will come away with a deeper understanding of how the imperatives of trade, transatlantic migration and geopolitics drove Virginia’s colonial Governor Alexander Spotswood to identify, recruit and settle talented ironworkers from the German Siegerland to a small fort on the frontier of European civilization.”

Hein said he hopes the exhibit will inform people about how Germanna settlers were instrumental in starting industrial entrepreneurship in Virginia.

For information on the German-American Heritage Museum and the featured exhibit click here.