The Virginia Colonial Records Project makes many documents available which help explain the conditions under which our ancestors lived and worked. Seldom are our ancestors directly mentioned by name (well, I am speaking of mine but perhaps you are a descendant of Blackbeard, the pirate, who is mentioned) but we can learn a lot about their life and times. Consider the following document, the petition of Col. Alexander Spotswood to the King of England.
Spotswood's titles to his land were clouded and he appealed to the King for a clarification. In doing so, he recounted his history in Virginia which was very involved with the Germans who were the labor in several of his enterprises, especially the Second Germanna Colony. The First Germanna Colony was also involved but there were fewer people for fewer years and they were less active on his behalf (Spotswood wrote once that the First Germanna Colony people did nothing for him for the first two years they were here). As Spotswood narrates his history, it is possible, especially in light of other evidence, to see our Germanna people involved and to imagine the labors in which they were involved.
In understanding this personal, first-person story, it is necessary to understand what Spotswood's objective was after he had been in Virginia for ten years. His iron furnace was still in the future. Furthermore, it was not clear that iron would be a success, either technically or politically. So in 1720 he was banking on making his fortune in land, not in iron. This is why, when he started construction of his Germanna home about 1720, that he located it at Germanna and not closer to where his iron mines were. When the furnace was built, it was thirteen miles from his home. At Germanna though, the center of mass of his land holdings was several miles to the west of Germanna. Thus he chose to build, not on the basis of his iron mines but on the basis of his land holdings. These holdings were extensive, most people say they amounted to about 85,000 acres.
However, the largest single tract to the west of Germanna was said to hold (in the patent itself) 40,000 acres. I have plotted this tract and found it was significantly larger than the 40,000 acres claimed. Sixty to sixty-five thousand acres is a much closer estimate. Starting almost at Germanna, the land ran to the west of the present-day town of Culpeper. Thus his land holdings were, in total, more than 100,000 acres.
When this "40,000" acre tract was settled (by the Second Germanna Colony), there had been a problem in finding enough people to make the settlement reasonably safe. Germanna itself, in 1714, was said by Spotswood to be fifteen miles beyond the usual course of the rangers. So the First Germanna Colony had been in a very exposed position. It was judged that they would be safe based on the presence of the fort and the number of people. About three and a-half years, later when the Second Colony was settled to the west of Germanna, their strength lay in the number of people which Spotswood said was seventy-odd. So it was the availability of this large number of Germans who made it practical to settle the 40,000 acres. It is a good question whether the Germans arrived by accident or by design. I will be examining this question in my talks at the Hebron Lutheran Church a week from tomorrow (the 20th of September).
A copy of the petition appeared in Beyond Germanna in volume 9, number 4 issue, which came out the past July.
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.