John Blankenbaker's Germanna History Notes

Note 292

When Alexander Spotswood investigated the potential status of silver and gold mines on lands patented from the Crown, he found the answer was clouded.  Traditionally, the Crown reserved a percentage of the gold and silver found on lands which they conveyed by patent to others.  For example, the lands in the Northern Neck had such a clause.  And early on in Virginia there was such a clause, but in one of the reorganizations of the Virginia government this reservation was omitted.  Spotswood was afraid that if he had a silver or gold mine which was productive, the Crown might step in and demand a percentage on the basis that it was only by an error that the right had been omitted.  Or they might take the extreme position and say they were entitled to all gold and silver.

There was a long correspondence between Spotswood and Col. Blakiston in London in which Spotswood urged Blakiston to get the question resolved.  The question was never resolved even though it pursued for years.  Queen Anne died and King George came to the throne.  Spotswood told Blakiston to use the argument with King George that he would be helping some of his countrymen, i.e., the Germans, if he settled the question.  Apparently there never was a resolution.

With the question unresolved, Spotswood would not let the Germans work on the silver mine.  Therefore, he could write two years after the Germans had arrived, that they had done no work for him to reimburse him for his expenses.  The Germans set to work at something resembling mining only after people in London invited Spotswood to join them in a search for iron ore.

Willis Kemper came to the wrong conclusions about why the Germans left and what they did in Virginia because he was guilty of a logical fallacy.  In logic, if it is true that event A implies event B, then if event A occurs, B must follow.  Kemper's error in reasoning was that B is true, so A must be true also.  This is a fallacy.

To Kemper, event B was the fact that Spotswood was eventually in the business of iron mining and smelting.  Event A was the Germans were recruited by Spotswood to mine and smelt iron.  Kemper did not know whether A was true or not but he did know that B was true.  By putting the argument together backwards, and falsely, he concluded that the Germans were recruited by Spotswood to mine and smelt iron.  Having arrived at this false conclusion, he tried to interpret all evidence to justify this conclusion.  But along the way he chose to ignore evidence that said his conclusion was false.

If the Germans were recruited to mine and smelt iron, why were they settled thirteen miles away from the furnace and iron mines?  If the Germans were recruited to mine and smelt iron, why did Spotswood write that they did nothing for him for the first two years?  One answer is that they were not recruited by Spotswood.  They were recruited by Graffenried to mine silver.  When Graffenried and his company went bankrupt, the Germans transferred their service to Spotswood in return for four years of labor on their part.  Spotswood could not use them immediately.  Eventually they did direct their efforts to finding iron, an enterprise in which they were successful.  But shortly thereafter, their four years were up and they moved to their lands in the Northern Neck.

One man who saw the lack of logic in the statements about the history of the First Germanna Colony was Brawdus Martin.  So he concocted a scenario in which the Germans were not at the Germanna we know but at the site where the furnace was later built.  He felt the answer required putting the Germans next to the furnace.  His compounding of the errors is perhaps understandable but he cannot be forgiven for his attempts to concoct false evidence to support his view.  Poor scholarship is one thing, but making up evidence to support an argument is not forgivable.