(Continuing clarifications of past notes.) Christopher Graffenried referred to Johann Justus Albrecht as the head miner. As to how Johann Justus Albrecht thought of himself, there is only one document that I know of that has original information. This is an unusual document, in German, in the Spotsylvania County Court Order Book of 1724-1730. No translation was provided and apparently the reason the document was maintained is that it is very ornate and looks important. A translation of it was made by Elke Hall and published in vol. 5, no. 1 issue of Beyond Germanna.
The document is dated 26 May 1712 at London. There are several pages to it but the number of sentences is less than the number of pages. This is the first problem in translation. A second problem is that meanings of words have changed. Reference to "union" means a body of owners, not of laborers. The title is "Shareholder's Book", and generally it describes the rules under which the "corporation" with transferrable shares will operate.
Albrecht describes himself in this book as "Gentleman Johann Justus Albrecht, Head Mine Captain", who will build the gold and silver mines in South Carolina. At another point, in the Shareholder's Book he implies the mine was completed on 5 January 1709. The reference to South Carolina and to the date is confusing and may only show that most Germans of that time were confused about geography in the New World. Klaus Wust says that Albrecht was selling or attempting to sell shares in the enterprise. Wust also states that Albrecht claimed to have been appointed Head of the Mines by the Queen and the Proprietors of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Carolina. And we know that Albrecht signed an agreement with the (Protestant) church in Siegen to secure their help in recruiting miners. In this agreement, he agreed to pay a percent of the mines output to the church.
If this sounds a bit like a "boiler room operation" or scam, it very well may have been. In Siegen, when Albrecht was recruiting miners, his statements and claims were exaggerated to the extent that an agent of the German emperor arrested him. It took the interventions of the English ambassador to rescue him. These are the implications of remarks by Graffenried in his memoirs.
Graffenreid says, when he arrived in London in 1713 from New York, that the Head Miner and forty-odd miners were there. When the Siegeners went on to Virginia the next January, Albrecht was apparently a member of the group. This is because of the statement in the Essex Co. Court for May 1720, signed by Albrecht and Jacob Holtzclaw, which described their work of mining and quarrying in the approximately two years up to December of 1718. So, if Albrecht was with the Siegeners in 1713 in London, and with them in 1716 in Virginia, it is reasonable to believe he was with them in the intervening years.
Albrecht "wanted to get something going." Toward this end, he stretched the truth at times. But a man who was intellectually honest might have failed where he succeeded. It is sad to think that the existence of Germanna with our Germans may have been dependent on a man of this character, but unfortunately it seems to be true. Without Albrecht, there would have been no Germanna nor First Colony or Second Colony or later Germans. He was one of the essential cogs in our existence as citizens of Germanna.
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.