The second major family genealogy to be published that pertains to the Germanna people was " Genealogy of the Kemper Family in the United States " by Willis Miller Kemper and Henry Linn Wright. It was published in 1899. Willis Kemper went on to publish another Germanna genealogy, one for the Fishback family. In the Kemper genealogy, Mr. Kemper found several source documents to aid him which advanced the state of the Germanna history. Still, he made some mistakes.
I can only smile when he (Willis Kemper) insists that the proper spelling of the Kemper name is K E M P E R. (This was in marked contrast to the opinion of the Gaar/Garrs who stated that there was no correct spelling of a name.) I would think a large fraction of the Campers would not agree with Willis Kemper. [Out of curiosity, how universal is the spelling Kemper and what other variations are there?]
Two Kemper brothers came to America. John was in Virginia among the Germanna people. His brother, (John) Henry Kemper came to Pennsylvania in 1738— the year of the Avenging Angels, a reference to the terrible problems encountered by emigrants that year. A sister of these two brothers also came, some time after 1742, with her husband, Johannes Brumbach, and her family. They settled in the Shenandoah Valley.
Willis Kemper, as with writers on Germanna history, assumes that the importation of the miners from the iron-mining region of Nassau-Siegen was because of an iron industry in Virginia. Kemper also assumes they were recruited at the request of Spotswood with Christopher de Graffenried as the agent for Spotswood. He was wrong on these points. Graffenried, supported by the letters of Spotswood, makes it clear that he initiated the recruitment of the Nassau-Siegen people to mine silver for the enterprise of George Ritter and Co. in which Graffenried was an associate.
Willis Kemper did read the autobiography of Graffenried and did read the letters of Spotswood. The mystery is, with all of this material at hand, how he could have erred. But perhaps, more than anything, it demonstrates that, when a person has some ideas in his head, nothing can get him to see alternative views.
Kemper went on to identify the site of Germanna as we think it is located today. He goes on to say this is where Spotswood had an iron mine and the first iron furnace in America was built and the first pig iron was made. Later writers and researchers decided there was no iron mine or iron furnace at Germanna. The led one individual, Broadus Martin, to insist that Fort Germanna was down the Rappahannock/Rapidan River some thirteen miles. And so errors were piled on top of one another.
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.