The Yowell name in the Germanna community perhaps took its final form under the influence of the English name Yowell. The family was known in Sulzfeld as Uhl . This was in Baden, where the Zimmerman and Kabler families were found on some occasions. Since the village of Sulzfeld is not large, the families surely knew each other there. The Uhl name went through several spellings in Virginia before it settled on Yowell. This process is what I call convergence, where the German form of the name changes into a better known English name. The German Barlows are another example of this process.
Hans Matthias Blankenbühler married Anna Maria Mercklin in Oberderdingen. Though no males of the name Mercklin were in the Germanna community, I give her name. (Little did she know that a great-great-great-great-great-grandson of hers would be writing about her.)
There is a Germanna family about whom almost nothing is known. They came from Zaberfeld, the home of Michael Kaifer and his sister Appolonia. The family is Hans Jerich, Anna Maria, Maria Margaret, and Maria Gottlieve Wegman . The only evidence for the family is the list of 48 people whose names were used by Spotswood as headrights. This list was made on the arrival of the Second Colony members on the ship Scott at Virginia. After that, the names are never heard of, or recorded again.
Because the number of people who are the candidates for membership in the Second Colony exceeds the seventy-odd that Spotswood gave, or the number of eighty that descendants of the Second Colony members said, I have been inclined to omit the Wegmans from those being counted. This may be an error on my part. That they arrived at Virginia cannot be questioned. I can think of two fates for the family.
Since the ship's captain had contracted to take the Scott's passengers to Pennsylvania, which he did not do but took them to Virginia, where he sold them to Spotswood and his partners as servants, the Wegmans may have considered that they had no obligation to remain in Virginia. They may have slipped out of Virginia at the first opportunity and moved to another colony.
The father, John George, may have died before many years passed and the name, Wegman, may have become extinct.
Hans Paulus Lederer was born in Schwaigern on 17 Jan 1709. He arrived at Philadelphia on the ship Johnson in 1733 and went to Virginia. This was logical considering whom his siblings married. One sister married a Reiner, another sister married a Boger, and a third sister married a Willheit. In Virginia he became known as Paul Leatherer.
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.