Continuing the lawsuits by Spotswood against some of the members of the Second Colony, the suits against Jacob Crigler, Andrew Ballenger, Michael Holt, George Utz, Michael Clore and Cyriacus Fleshmen were dismissed. In some cases, the defendant agreed to pay costs. But as we saw with Jacob Crigler, the original amount was over thirty-four pounds sterling, a very sizeable amount. Just for fun, not as an authority, this might be equivalent to thirty-four thousand dollars today. Yet this suit was settled for costs. In the face of actions such as this by Spotswood, one finds it difficult to credit him as a noble character.
Suits which went to trial, the amount sued for, and the amount awarded include:
Phillip Paulitz, 18 pounds, 4 pounds
Conrad Amburge, 32 pounds, 3 pounds
Nicholas Jeager, 35 pounds, 7 pounds
Balthazer Blankenbucher, 11 pounds, 4 pounds
Hendrick Snyder, 18 pounds, 3 pounds
George Moyer, 24 pounds, 15 pounds
Michael Cook, 3 pounds, 2 pounds
John Bryol, 17 pounds, 8 pounds
Michael Smith, 14 pounds, 4 pounds
Michael Kaifer 11 pounds, 1 pound
Mathias Blankenbucher, 12 pounds, 7 pounds
Nicholas Blankenbucher, 9 pounds, 1 pound
George Sheible, 4 pounds, 2 pounds.(In the amounts above, the shillings and pence were dropped.)
With the six suits that did not go to trial, this makes a total of 19 people who were originally sued by Spotswood. (It is generally assumed that all of the people who were sued were Second Colony members.)
The basis of the suits by Spotswood has never been clearly shown. Two ideas have been put forward. One is that the suits were a harassment to keep the Germans from moving as soon as they wanted to or perhaps even to encourage them to remain indefinitely on Spotswood's land. The second idea is that Spotswood was trying to recover the transportation costs. It seems to me that both of these are weak arguments but still they might be true. I have also put forth the idea that Spotswood had placed cattle with them in the beginning and he expected to get an equivalent number back plus half of the increase. It is a known fact that he did place cattle on this basis with tenants.
Overall, the lawsuits are a blotch on the character of Spotswood. He had greatly unrealistic ideas of what was due to him. Never did he provide any written form of the contract; instead he expected the world to believe his version of the agreement. Apparently he was trying to use the jurors in the newly created county of Spotsylvania to award him money at the expense of the Germans.
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.