John Blankenbaker's Germanna History Notes

Note 246

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For registering surnames of interest to you so that others can see them, RootsWeb (who makes this list possible) has a registry and search service. First, the URL for this is:

http://www.rootsweb.com/rootsweb/searches/rslsearch.html
(Click on the above URL to go immediately to the Search Service.)

and, if you start with this, you will be presented with a search form.  Another page, accessible from this starting point, tells how you can entry names.  I have registered more than one hundred Germanna names.  If you search and find that "germanna" is interested in the name, that is my registry.  I hear from quite a few people in this way.  Incidentally, have you sent your Christmas present to the people who make Germanna_Colonies and the Roots Surname List possible?  Christmas is an appropriate time to send something.  Running these operations put them in the Red and it takes a lot of the long Green to offset the expenses.

(Note from this Web Page Manager:  If you are interested in becoming a contributor to RootsWeb, the fantastic Genealogy Mailing List Server, you may go to this URL (click on "URL") to find out how to contribute and all about the great benefits of being a contributor. George W. Durman, AKA "SgtGeorge" )

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Do you have trouble understanding colonial documents?  Frankly, I do. Even though I classify myself as reasonably intelligent, I sometimes read sentences in a colonial document and find myself saying, "What did he say?"  Usually, I understand each word but when I put them together I am left wondering if all of the words between the two periods have a subject or have a verb.  Along the way I may encounter several phrases which each have a subject and a verb but the overall sentence lacks what I was taught were the requirements for a good sentence.

There is also a tendency to use commas when periods would probably be more appropriate.  Elke Hall, who translated a 1712 document from the German for me, said that it had more pages in the document than there were sentences.  Alexander Spotswood was as guilty of this as were clerks.  Of course, he did not write himself.  He had a private secretary.

Land patents and grants are the easiest to read.  Before starting, one knows just about what to expect as they used standard phrases and structures.

The worse offenders are the wills.  After reading many of them, I say, "I'm, glad I'm not the executor because it is not entirely clear to me what the intention is."

I suspect that others may have the same problem as I do.  Nancy Dodge sent a copy of something to the list recently asking for an interpretation.  She asked what the "something" was.  Well, I am confused about the answer and perhaps you were also.  I am inclined to the view that the "something" was a lease, but I do not find anything in it that confirms to me that this is the case.  What did you make Nancy's submission to be?