In recent notes, we have looked at the information that can be found in the German church records. All of the work that we have reported, had been found, corrected, or verified by private individuals who were willing to release the information into the public domain.
The German ancestry of the First Germanna Colony members has been worked out just about as far as is possible. Much of this work was done by German residents who were interested in the Germanna Colonies. The Germanna Foundation published this, as compiled by B. C. Holtzclaw, as a part of Germanna Record Five, "Ancestry and Descendants of the Nassau-Siegen Immigrants to Virginia, 1714-1750". Not nearly as much had been done for the Second Colony members.
Professional researchers saw a void which they could fulfill. Knowing where the Willheits and the Blankenbakers and perhaps some others were from, they adopted the search strategy of looking at all of the churchs in villages that were close to the known villages. The strategy was extremely successful. The results, by Johni Cerny and Gary J. Zimmerman of Lineages, Inc., were published in a series of twelve booklets called "Before Germanna". I believe that all twelve booklets can be purchased from them on a computer diskette. If interested, contact Lineages, Inc. at PO Box 417, Salt Lake City, UT 84110. I also believe that the booklets can be purchased as printed matter from American Genealogical Lending Library Publishers, PO Box 244, Bountiful, UT 84011.
Not all families have yielded the same amount of data for a variety of reasons. As we saw, the Willheit family yielded a great amount of data while other families have a minimum, such as the Utz family. Using a modern spelling (but not necessarily the only one), the following families were found:
The church records for these families are available on microfilm through the Latter Day Saints. Not all church records have been filmed. There are also civil records to be consulted. Almost all research so far has omitted the sponsors at the baptisms, a veritable font. Someone who wished to benefit his fellow researchers could undertake the task of extending and augmenting what has been found so far.
The individual who is interested in one family, say one whose origin is unknown, would do best to identify closely allied families in America and to see if they have known origins. This is the basic "Hank Jones strategy". One needs a detailed map and gazeteer, a willingness to consider spelling variations and patience. There is a learning curve for the German script, but as Stephen Broyles said here, "It can be done". Some people would prefer to hire experts, but others love the fun of the chase itself.
Gary Zimmerman of Lineages was not related to the Germanna Zimmermans nor to any of the Germanna people. Though he was the principal researcher and apparently made some initial mistakes, he did start from ground zero and he did succeed. I used the past tense in speaking of Gary as he died on the morning of a Germanna Seminar when his co-worker, Johni Cerny, gave a talk on the research effort.
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.