The last notes digressed some from the original purpose of finding the missing members of the First Germanna Colony. They did point out that the records which might shed some light are very few in number. The first records in which in any appreciable number of the Germans appeared were the proofs of importation made in 1724, a full ten years after their arrival.
Considering the probability of death, it is not surprising that one or more families would be missing by 1724. So, no great surprise should be expressed at the idea that some people were missing.
The requirements or essential aspects of the missing family(ies) are that it contains several daughters to provide the spouses for the bachelors and that it contains no surviving sons who would have had land. There could have been sons who died. Then, if the father of the family had died in the period from 1714 to 1724, the daughters could have been included in the proofs of importations of their husbands. The mother might have still been living but failed to make a proof of importation. Had she lived, it is unlikely that she would have received land, living instead with her daughters and sons-in-law.
Another requirement on the family is that the daughters are about the right age for marriage, which means the parents were probably above the average age. It would be also be convenient if the daughters had the given names that matched the names of the wives of the bachelors.
From what we know about the emigration patterns, such a family would be very likely to have come from the same area as the other families. Also, it is even probable that they were related.
Armed with this outline of the family, it is possible to search the records around Siegen for it. Another requirement is that a candidate family must disappear from the records in the Siegen area.
I do not know whether B.C. Holtzclaw was the one who found a possible family or not, but he was a proponent of one consisting of Harmon and Elizabeth (Heimbach) Utterbach with their children, John Philip, John, Elizabeth, Alice Catherine, Mary Catherine, and Anna Catherine. The requirements enumerated above are well satisfied, though it is necessary to postulate that the father and the sons died. Some people are not satisfied with this suggestion as the evidence is circumstantial. Still, courts will convict a defendant on circumstantial evidence.
Areas for additional research in the Siegen area include verification that the family does, in fact, disappear from the records. This is a hard thing to do, but still an exhaustive search does say something. Also, it may be the case that one or both of the sons died in Germany. Any search should also include looking for alternative families. Maybe another family meets the requirements better. And it is possible that the missing family is really two families.
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.