As soon as Spotswood smelled silver and gold, or thought there was a possibility that they existed in Virginia, he investigated the legal status of silver and gold mines. What he found was very discouraging. Normally, land patents from the crown reserved to the crown a percentage of precious metals that might be found on the land. In the case of the lands patented from the crown, there had been an oversight and no reservation had been made. (In the Northern Neck, the crown had reserved a percentage of the gold and silver that might be found.) This was a dangerous situation. For example, if silver were to be found on the silver mine tract which had been patented by Larkin Chew, the crown might step in after the fact and claim a large percentage or perhaps even all of the output.
Therefore, as soon as Spotswood became an investor in the projected silver mine, he went to work to try and get a clarification from the crown of what percentage they would want. In doing this, Spotswood worked with the agent for Virginia who was located in London, Col. Blakiston. Of course, this involved letters and several of them on the subject have been preserved. They tell us that Spotswood was very excited about his new mine and he was urging Blakiston, in as strong words as politeness would allow, to action to get this question resolved. As a consequence, Blakiston became well acquainted with Spotswood's hopes and plans.
Apparently the question was never settled though the effort went on from 1713 to the reign of George I.
In 1709, when Graffenried and Michel were in London, they formulated the idea of establishing a colony to mine the silver which Michel had thought he had located. If mining was necessary, the use of skilled miners seemed desirable. Without regard to the type of ore, they decided to recruit in the area of Siegen where there were iron mines. Since Graffenried and Michel had to go on to America at that time, they hired an agent, Johann Justus Albrecht, to do the actual recruiting. So from London, Michel and Graffenried went west and Albrecht went east.
Within a short time, Graffenried hoped to bring the people from Siegen to Virginia. Graffenried told Spotswood about his plans and Spotswood referred to them in his letter to the Board of Trade in which he asked about settling foreigners. This was the letter in which Spotswood suggested they be settled on the frontier as a barrier to the Indians to protect the inhabitants. But these people were being recruited by Graffenried, not by Spotswood. And they were to be settled under a colonization plan which Graffenried and Michel had submitted to the Queen.
When Graffenried went bankrupt, Spotswood probably thought that was the end of the Germans who were to be imported. And had everything been logical, that would probably would have been the end of the story. Somehow, and this is a big part of the mystery, the Germans went from Siegen to London. Graffenried admitted to writing that if one or two of them wanted to come to America to have a look-see, then they could come ahead. But he claimed to be mystified as to how they could have imagined that he was encouraging them all to come. Graffenried suggests that Albrecht, the "head miner," had misunderstood or misconstrued his remarks.
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.