John Blankenbaker's Germanna History Notes

Note 88

In the last note, we recognized a group of families from the region of Siegen who came to Virginia, through Philadephia, and settled in Culpeper Co. in a region called "Little Fork" (to distinguish it from the Great Fork of the Rappahannock).  The group arrived in 1734.  This note recognizes another group who arrived in 1738 by an even more circuitous route to the Little Fork.

The pastor at Freudenberg left the names of about 50 people who left to go to Georgia.  (The customary place for this is in the death register of the parish books.)  The pastor may have been mistaken about the location of Georgia or the ship may have gone to another port; in any case, there is no trace of the individuals in Georgia.

A list of the names has been published in the " Siegener Zeitung " of 16 Mar 1961, where it is said that the crossing from Southampton to Savannah took 134 days which is just shy of 20 weeks or a little over four months.  Of the names in the death register, five names appear in the Little Fork community within a short time.  Without any record of any of the names in Georgia, the other individuals may have moved to Pennsylvania.  The five names that appear in Virginia are:

Hermann Bach and his wife Anna Margaret Hausmann, with their daughter Anna Ella.  These names are taken from the death register, so caution must be exerted in saying that all of the individuals reached Virginia, especially after such a long voyage.

Johann Friedrich Müller, his wife Anna Maria Arnd, and their son, Matthias.

Hermann Müller, brother of Friedrich above, came as a bachelor and married Elizabeth Holtzclaw.  The Muellers were related to the Fishbacks.

Georg Weidmann, bachelor, is no doubt George Wayman here.  He was a cousin of Hermann Bach.

Johannes Hofmann was a bachelor when he left Germany, and evidently never married after arriving in Virginia; he died in 1741, with Henry Huffman as his administrator.  Perhaps the two men were cousins.

Other names on the death list from Freudenberg include:

Tillman Seelbach and his wife Anna Berta,

Tillman's daughter, Anna Maria, and son-in-law Gerlach Waffenschmidt, with four children.

Hymenaeus Creutz and his wife Elisabeth,
Tillman Steinseiffer (a bachelor),
John Heinrich Schmidt,
Johannes Klappert,
and Tillman Gudelius.

From Plittershagen:

Johannes Halm, his wife Anna Cathrin and two children,
Johann Heinrich Schneider, his wife Maria Catrin and two children,
Johann Georg Hirnschal, his wife Anna Cathrin and one child, plus his father Tillman.

From Anstoss:

Heinrich Schneider, his wife Anna Margaret and two children,
Hannah, widow of Johanna Schneider, with her son, Johannes, his wife and four children.

The names after the five original ones are included in case someone should recognize them.  If so, let me know.

With these two "colonies", one in 1734 and one in 1738, the First Colony grew significantly; however, the newcomers were nearly all settled away from Germantown in today's Fauquier Co.  Instead the majority were in today's Culpeper Co. in the Little Fork.  By 1740 there are four communities where the Germans were settled:

Germantown,
The Robinson River,
Mt. Pony,
and Little Fork.