Two families, of the six that left Gemmingen in the summer of 1717 for Pennsylvania, were the Beckh and Mühleckher families. Of the Beck family there is no further record. The Mühleckher name appears on the importation list of Gov. Spotswood when he used 48 names to help pay for a tract of land. Though the departing family consisted of the father, mother, her sister, and two young daughters of the parents, the mother's sister does not appear on Spotswood's list.
This is the last record of the Milcker family in Virginia. It is possible that the father died and the remaining surviving members of the family, all females, married other members of the Second Colony. There is another possible interpretation that I gave previously for the Wegman family, who appears also on the importation list but nowhere else in the Virginia records. These families may have decided that it was fraud that brought them to Virginia and that they were not bound to fulfill their contract with Gov. Spotswood.
It does appear that Capt. Andrew Tarbett, the Master of the ship Scott, did contrive, in violation of his agreement with the passengers to take them to Pennsylvania, to take them to Virginia where he was abetted in his nefarious scheme by Spotswood. Since the whole action was illegal, the Milckers and the Wegmans may have felt that they were not obligated to stay in Virginia. They very well may have arranged their own transportation to Pennsylvania, perhaps under the cover of darkness. One could hardly blame them.
The Smith brothers, Michael and Matthew, were also from Gemmingen where the name was spelled in some of the records as Schmidt. Sometimes the "d" or the "t" is omitted.
It has been stated that the Holt name could not be German. From Germany to Virginia, the "d" and "t" letters were often interchanged. This was the case with Michael Holt in Virginia whose name in Germany was Hold. Some of his ancestry in Germany was traced out by Zimmerman and Cerny and reported in the "Before Germanna" monographs. Jimmy Veal, a descendant, had a professional researcher in Germany repeat the research with the result that two names in the Michael Holt ancestry were misspelled. Warren Holt Talley, another descendant, wanting to verify the Veal report, obtained the microfilm and, from his own reading and that of his German sister-in-law, supports the Veal finding. The corrected names are Brückmann and Nägelin.
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.