John Fishback, one of the three trustees for the original Germantown purchase, acquired several patents and grants for land in his own name. It would appear that he worked closely with Jacob Holtzclaw, since their lands were often adjacent or at least in the same neighborhood. One of his first acquisitions, in 1725, in the form of a grant of 592 acres on Broad Run and Bull Run, was assigned to John Deskins who took out a new grant. Why this grant was abandoned is not clear. It may have been that Deskins offered Fishback a quick profit.
In 1729, he had a grant of 280 acres in King George Co., on the Rappahannock above Great Run.
In 1731, John Fischback of Prince William Co. had a grant for 1028 acres on Broad Run in Prince William Co. This land appears to border land of Jacob Holtzclaw.
Up to this time, the name is spelled as Fischback in the land records, but after this time the name is spelled Fishback.
John Fishback also had land, obtained initially as a patent in 1730, in Spotsylvania County in the Little Fork area. Later the land fell into Orange and Culpeper Counties. There was 400 acres in this tract, but John's son, Frederick, took a grant with Lord Fairfax in 1748, in which the tract was extended to 790 acres. Probably John had posted the larger area as his.
The third trustee, John Hoffman, moved to the Robinson River Valley in the late 1720's. His first acquisition was adjacent to the land of his second wife's mother. Hoffman was able to extend his holdings in this area over the years until his final grant included total holdings of more than 3500 acres. His motivation in land acquisition seems to have been the desire to be able to leave land to his children. By his second wife, Mary Sabina Volck, he had nine sons and three daughters. I believe also that there were three children from his first marriage.
I believe that John Fishback left his land to his children. While Holtzclaw left land to his children, he sold some of his land to the new arrivals from Germany, but in all cases, the amount of land that the three men owned was far beyond any dreams that they might have had when they were still in Germany.
Germantown would have retained more of its German character had the original inhabitants been able to buy more land in the neighborhood. Because of the land policies in the Northern Neck, additional land often had to be procured at some distance from Germantown. This diluted the German nature of the community.
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.