Germanna Foundation takes the time to honor and remember our mothers and foremothers. Pioneering women in North America have been around for centuries. 400 years ago, in 1619, more than 100 women were brought to Jamestown as a way of bringing stability to Virginia and ensuring the first permanent English settlement would grow and flourish. […]
Frank Turnage
I am saddened to report the death of our friend, Dr. Frank Turnage, former Executive Director of the Germanna Foundation and serving as Trustee Emeritus at the time of his death. Frank, whose roots go back to colonial North Carolina and Virginia, had a long and distinguished career in the Virginia Community College System and […]
John O. Marsh, Jr. (1926-2019), Germanna Descendant
The Germanna family recently lost a proud descendant of Germanna’s Second Colony Wieland / Wayland family, John O. “Jack” Marsh, Jr., one of the most powerful but least known men in Washington in the 1970s and 1980s. He was an Army officer, lawyer, Virginia congressman, adviser to Presidents and the longest-serving Secretary of the Army. […]
Germanna Foundation eyes the future
The Germanna Foundation’s new Executive Director was recently featured in Culpeper Star Exponent article written by Clint Schemmer: Germanna Foundation eyes the future The Germanna Foundation is no longer just a genealogy organization. The Virginia-based nonprofit has broadened its mission beyond representing the descendants of the Germans who settled the colony’s early 18th-century frontier. The […]
Germanna in Memoriam
The Germanna Foundation extends condolences to family members of people in our Germanna community who passed away recently: Horst Schneider The board received with regret news of the death of Trustee Emeritus Horst Schneider of Siegen Kaan-Marienbborn on 3 October 2018. Horst succeeded his good friend Heinz Prinz on the Germanna board when Heinz died […]
The Germanna Foundation names Timothy E. Sutphin Executive Director
The Germanna Foundation is pleased to announce the appointment of Timothy E. Sutphin as its new Executive Director. Tim joins the foundation with over 25 years of experience in the public history profession with the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation. “The chance to lead the Germanna Foundation in a new and exciting direction […]
Hilary Duff discovers she is a Spotswood descendant
On a recent episode of the TLC TV series, “Who Do You Think You Are?”, actress/singer Hilary Duff found out that her 7x great-grandfather was early colonial Virginia Lt. Governor Alexander Spotswood! Here at Germanna, we knew about this early on but were unable to say anything as we did not know what material they’d […]
Anna Jarvis, the Germanna Descendant who Founded Mother’s Day
Germanna descendant Anna Jarvis, the founder of Mother’s Day, devoted years to gaining national recognition for a day to honor mothers, as a fulfillment of a dream held by her own mother—Ann Marie Reeves Jarvis. Ann Marie was born in Culpeper in 1832, the daughter of Josiah Washington Reeves and Nancy Kemper Reeves, whose Kemper […]
Who Were Germanna’s Founders?
The inspiring history of the Germanna colonies lay nearly forgotten for 200 years. Threads of awareness emerge in the historical writing of professor William J. Hinke c. 1920, in an inquiry to President Calvin Coolidge from Müsen, Germany, in 1927 about descendants of the 1714 emigrants from that village, in the Reformed Church’s commemoration of […]
Germanna Descendant in NSA’s Hall of Honor
Parker Hitt, a 3rd great-grandson of Peter Hitt and Elizabeth Otterbach, through Germanna Colonists Harmon Hitt and wife Mary Weaver, is in the National Security Agency’s (NSA) Hall of Honor for being a pioneer in cryptology. Here is the write-up about him on NSA’s website: NSA/CSS Hall of Honor The Hall of Honor was created in […]
