Willis Kemper got several of his facts wrong or, perhaps more exactly, he interpreted the data available to him wrongly. He says that iron was discovered upon land which Spotswood and his associates owned. If you do not count the partial ownership in the projected silver mine, Spotswood did not own any land in Virginia for several years. And prior to his coming to Virginia, iron had been a known resource in Virginia for over a century. In fact, in 1622, a large iron furnace was constructed at about the location of today's Richmond. This location was too exposed to the Indians who destroyed the furnace before it could produce any iron.
When Spotswood arrived in Virginia in 1710, he was introduced to William Byrd. Byrd owned land on which there was proven iron. He, Byrd, knowing that iron furnaces cost a lot of money, proposed to Spotswood that the Virginia Colony sponsor an iron works. All that Byrd asked in return was a position in the iron company. Spotswood was aware of the state of iron production in England. Most of the timber had been felled there to make charcoal to use as a fuel in the smelting process. There was plenty of ore but a scarcity of wood. As a consequence, England had to import both iron and naval stores from the Baltic countries. Therefore, it made excellent sense for England to encourage the Virginia Colony to produce iron. Spotswood proposed to the Virginia Assembly that they undertake this. The Assembly, seeing this as an expense and as higher taxes, voted it down. Then Spotswood proposed the Queen herself undertake it as a personal project. He did not get a favorable reply. But the common feature of the two entities to whom he made his proposal was "deep pockets." Budgets for self-sufficient iron furnaces ran into thousands of pounds sterling before the furnace became profitable. Spotswood did not have this kind of money himself. He dropped the subject since he could not afford it, and the Assembly and the Queen were not interested.
There was one other factor, besides the economics, which would have discouraged a potential investor in iron works. The policy of England was that the colonies were to produce raw materials, and English merchants and labor would convert the raw materials into finished goods. The Board of Trade alerted Spotswood to this policy and told him it would be a risk on the part of owners to have an iron furnace in Virginia. Since most iron furnaces produced finished goods as well as pig iron, any furnace could get into political trouble.
The net result was that Spotswood dropped the subject of iron and looked for other interesting projects. He did hold meetings with Graffenried on more than one occasion. First, remember that Graffenried was now a Baron and Spotswood was respectful of titles. Second, Graffenried had a letter from Queen Anne which instructed Spotswood to allocate lands to Graffenried for his colony. And Graffenried told Spotswood that the reason he was interested in land in Virginia was that his associate, Michel, thought he had found silver there. Spotswood became very interested in silver but whether it was Graffenried or another source that was responsible is not clear. Three thousand acres of land were patented in 1713 in the neighborhood of what became the future Germanna. Several people had an interest in this land. Spotswood had a quarter interest and Graffenried had a sixteenth interest. We now know it was a projected silver mine because of Graffenried's description of it.
Simultaneously with this, Spotswood was investigating the status of silver and gold mines on lands patented from the Crown. What he found did not please him.
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.