At the start of the half-centuries in these notes, it is customary to welcome old and new friends and to explain my philosophy in the preparation of these notes. Many of you are probably not Germanna people by the strictest definition of the word. I interpret "Germanna" very broadly. Furthermore, much that would be of interest to strict Germanna colonist descendants is also of interest to all researchers of German ancestries. Some of it may be of interest to other nationalities. At the same time, some of these notes will delve into details of particular families which may not be of interest to all, not even to all Germanna descendants. There are more than one hundred Germanna family names and sometimes it is hard to maintain an interest in someone else's families.
One of the things that our research is showing is that more families did have a connection to Germanna than we had previously counted. Some of the families did not live for very long in the community before they moved on, or the line died out. Some of them are allied only by marriage, but a complete story requires our attention to them as well.
Within the established families, one should be concerned that the family histories have been correctly told. The recent history (the last ten years) of the Rector family is frightening for all families. It had been thought that the early Rector history was well in hand, but then John Gott and John Alcock dug into the courthouse records and they found that some major revisions were necessary. And these were the result of just a few pieces of paper. In other families, how many pieces of paper have never been found? Or how many important events were never recorded?
All of our "facts" should have a probability connected to them. Nothing is certain. At the same time, we need better documentation of what we have found. We need more research. In many cases, the evidence is clearly there; it just needs searching out. As an example, in the last year, the children of Jacob Aylor (#5 in the Germanna Foundation Records) have had three of their four grandparents corrected. For this research we have to give thanks to Nancy Dodge and Craig Kilby, and to the others who worked with them.
In my estimation there is too much emphasis on numbers (quantity) and not enough on research (quality). I would be the first to admit that these notes are not research quality, but I do hope they are interesting and contain some valuable observations. Nothing pleases me more than having a note lead to an extended discussion on the GERMANNA_COLONIES Mailing List service at RootsWeb, which is for all to use. It is not restricted to any subset of people. Anyone may initiate a message, observation, or question.
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.