Warren Lawrence corrected my estimate that 160 liters of grain would be about one bushel. He found that ten liters equals 0.284 bushels. Thus, 160 liters would be 16 times .284 or 4.54 bushels. Please make this correction in note 333. And thank you, Warren, for bringing this to our attention.
Betty Barlow (Email her at: BetBarlow@aol.com ) asked a question which will be the main topic of this note. Her ancestor M. Beller (one of the ways that Barlow was spelled in the early days) had a joint land patent with M. Smith. This was issued in 1726. She observes that all of the patents in the Robinson River Valley that were issued in this time period seemed to have no specification of either fees or head rights. In other words the land seems to be free.
Betty is correct. The land was free. The members of the Second Colony were able to take advantage of a law proposed by Alexander Spotswood that was enacted into law. This law was a part of the legislation creating the new counties of Spotsylvania and Brunswick. The law, in effect, said that to encourage settlement in the new counties, land in them would be free for ten years. As the law was passed, it was vague about what was to be forgiven. Also, the law was unusual legislation and required approval in England. It took a while, but in the main, smaller parcels were free of the initial payment and were free of the quitrents. Both provisions were limited to seven years. Only the county of Spotsylvania benefitted, as Brunswick was not ready for development. Of course, the prime beneficiary of the new law was Spotswood, who had more than 100,000 acres in the new county. (He admitted to only about 85,000 acres.)
Willis Kemper, who wrote the early Kemper and Fishback histories, was not aware of this law and its effect. As a consequence, he misinterpreted history and came to the wrong conclusion, which has biased the understanding of the roles of all of the Germans. He had asked himself, "Why didn't the Second Colony move to the general location of the First Colony at Germantown and so form a single German community." He seemed to take this a personal insult to the First Colony people and he felt that an answer was necessary. The best that he could come up with was that there was an antagonism between the groups because of the religious differences. The First Colony was Reformed and the Second Colony was Lutheran.
Land was free in Spotsylvania County and that is a more likely reason that the Second Colony chose to make their permanent homes in the Robinson River Valley.
Returning to the Smith-Beller joint patent, it remains an unsolved question as to why the two men decided to do this. Joint patents often indicate some relationships between the families, but I believe that none are known in this case.
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.