At the half-century points in these notes, it is customary to review their purposes. They started (one) as a way to build interest in the Germanna Colonies list service, and (two) as an outlet for my creative juices. One problem is that after three hundred and fifty of the notes, finding topics is not easy. I wish that I knew enough about all the Germanna families to be able to write more about them.
Very strictly speaking, only a few families, on the order of a dozen, lived within the confines of Fort Germanna on the Rapidan River in Virginia. One might argue that these were THE Germanna families. But just a few miles up the river (the Rapidan), some twenty-odd German families lived and they overlapped the first group in time. So, traditionally, they have been included also among the Germanna families. Almost immediately, relative and friends of these two groups started coming. They lived in the neighborhood of the first groups who themselves were moving around. Trying to draw a geographical distinction between the first comers and the later ones seems arbitrary, so the definition of what constitutes a Germanna person was extended to include them all.
The routes of these later comers were both direct to Virginia and via other colonies, especially through Pennsylvania. Many times, these Germanna immigrants had lived for a while in these other areas and so their history was broader than a narrow definition would imply. While the primary focus is on the Germans who lived east of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia (the Piedmont), these notes include a broader range of topics. Stories from Germany, or from the other colonies, illustrate life of the Germanna people, even if the Germanna people were not involved. I believe the stories of the Moravian missionaries traveling through Virginia from Pennsylvania to North Carolina were well received. Yet their route was not through Germanna territory, nor were the missionaries Germanna people. But, they did give us a better appreciation of life in the eighteenth century.
If I may be permitted a personal observation or two, I believe more emphasis in researching our ancestors should be placed on quality and less on quantity. There is too much information floating around which is in error.
I would also like to see more people to adopt a community and study the community without regard to whether they have ancestors there. Maybe there is a courthouse where the loose papers have not been analyzed. People have traced their family through the church records in, say Schwaigern, but has anyone prepared a history of the marriages, baptisms, and deaths in all of Schwaigern? Going up the WILLHEIT tree in Schwaigern one encounters Reiners, and both of these families are later at Germanna. Were they related? And there are records besides the church records.
I do appreciate your comments and questions. I regret that I cannot do as much research on your family as you might like. If you would like to send your comments and/or questions, you may do so by subscribing to the GERMANNA_COLONIES Mailing List at RootsWeb (see below) and posting your queries, OR you may send an immediate email to me by clicking John.Blankbaker@comcast.net, germannaresearch@comcast.net"> here .
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.