In recent notes there has been an attempt to group people by the approximate time of their appearance in the Germanna community. The name of Christian Clements may have been overlooked. He was an earlier immigrant as he purchased 600 acres on Deep Run in the Robinson River community adjacent to John Hoffman. He was also a neighbor to John Paul Vogt, who was his father-in-law, since Christian married Catherine Margaret Vogt (Vaught). The Clements and the Vogts moved to the Shenandoah Valley ca 1744 and were in the first wave of emigrants out of the Robinson River Valley. About the same time, others were moving to North Carolina.
The given name Christian was a stumbling block for the English clerks who seemed to regard Christian as an improper given name. They usually converted it into Christopher.
Rudolph Crecelius and his wife Maria Elisabeth had Johannes, born 14 Oct 1777, baptized at the Hebron Church. The name Crecelius hardly looks German and, in fact, it is not a proper German spelling. In the 1600's, it became a fad to "Latinize" the spelling of one's name, especially among the lawyers and doctors, i.e., university trained people. There were a couple of mentions of the family at church, but the records were sparse for this family. It was found that Rudolph Cretselious and his wife Elizabeth were buried in Washington County, TN in the Old Dutch Meeting House cemetery. Continued advertising for information on the family turned up more, a rather complete family history starting in the colonies in Pennsylvania, moving through Virginia and on to Tennessee. The people who supplied this information had not been aware of the birth of John in Virginia.
The Crecelius family illustrates that a move often took several years. A family might leave Pennsylvania, perhaps were not sure what the final destination was. But they tried one locality, perhaps staying only for a winter and a growing season, perhaps a little longer, but moving on to still other localities where the prospect appeared brighter in terms of the climate or opportunity for land was better or the attitude toward slavery was permissive or against. These migration paths were both north and south and people on the move probably encountered others moving in the opposite direction.
Genealogists though pull their hair out at the thought of this transient behavior which is very hard to follow.
Sometimes we are left wondering what name was intended in a record. For example, John Dearet and his wife Maria were sponsors for Jacob, son of Ambrose Garriott and his wife Elizabeth Blankenbaker. There were Dear families in the community so Dearet might be a variation. Or handwriting being what it was at the church (and in German), maybe Dearet was a misreading of Garriott. A third possibility, and perhaps the most likely, is John Derret who was adjacent to Philip Clayton on Muddy Run Mountain. He was adjacent to Bryan and William Fairfax, who are below Devil's Run, Mountain Run, and Muddy Run Mountain (using information from Peggy Joiner on the early grants). Ambrose Garriott was not a member of the Lutheran church. He might be considered a Germanna family because of his marriage to a Germanna descendant. However, John Dearet is probably not a Germanna family.
It does not suffice to study only the Germanna families because there were intermarriages between the English and German communities. But also, there were English and German families of the same name. Two that come to mind immediately are the Smith and Thomas families. And to make the sorting harder, there were English-German marriages in these families.
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.