Two of the Germanna families that are easily confused are the Waylands and the Waymans. The head of the Wayman family came in 1738 on the ill-fated ship Oliver and was reported by the pastor at Freudenberg, near Siegen, as leaving with a large group of people in the spring of 1738. The distribution of the name, Weidmann, in Germany is broadly based and not particularly centered in Nassau-Siegen.
The Wayland name in Germany is spelled as Wieland. The name is to be found in the area from where the majority of the Second Colony members came.
Cook is the English equivalent of the German name Koch. They mean the same and sound much alike. Michael Cook, of the Second Colony, came from Schwaigern and was one of the about 300 people who emigrated from that small market town in the eighteenth century. Virginia got a fair share of these people. Michael Cook married Barbara Reiner whose brother came to Virginia about 1749.
The Yagers, who came with the Second Colony, were not from the area where most of the Second Colony lived. Most likely, as the people traveled down the Rhine River, they joined forces to go to Pennsylvania. The name is spelled as Jäger in Germany (it means "Hunter"). In America, the spellings Yager and Yeager are used.
There is a mystery about John Michael Stoltz in Virginia. He is mentioned, in 1725, in a property description in Hanover County. Then he had a land patent in the Robinson River Valley. He lost this land because he apparently failed to develop it. He was in the tithables of 1739 for Orange County and his estate was administered by another John Michael Stolts, which was probably his son. It is to be hoped that more information will become available on the family.
Lawrence Crees in the Robinson River area had to suffer many variations in the spelling of his name. In Germany, it was spelled as Greys. He left only one daughter, Rebecca, who married Timothy Swindel, so the name never developed an American form. Like the Harnsbergers and the Yagers, the Crees were not from the neighborhood of the Second Colony members. He came a little later than the Second Colony members.
Another mystery person was Henry Frederick Beyerback, for whom there are very few records in Virginia. In the early 1740's, Peter Weaver sold him land on two occasions. In 1746 he died. The name was sometimes spelled with a "P" here. In Germany, the spelling was varied with other letters such as "i" or "u" used for the "y". The name also appears in the form of Bierbach or Beurbach.
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.