The emphasis which people of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries placed on silver and gold may seem strange to us. At that time, though, many people believed that gold and silver were to be found. After all, did not Spain have many gold and silver mines in Central and South America? Why shouldn't England have gold and silver mines in North America? Even before Jamestown was founded, trips had been made to the falls of the James River, approximately near the site of Richmond today, to search for silver. (In this same area, iron was found and an iron furnace was built in 1622.) The governor of Connecticut received instructions from England in the seventeenth century to use dogs of the best "cent" to find silver.
Graffenried, while he was in America, met a man who claimed he had been with Michel when Michel found his silver mines. Spotswood wrote to the Board of Trade that there were reports of silver mines. And Spotswood went so far as to have a three thousand acre tract of land patented (now located in Orange County) on which he thought there were prospects of silver. Since Graffenried owned a one-sixteenth share of this, he must have done some service for Spotswood that caused Spotswood to return the favor.
Certainly Graffenried believed or had strong hopes for silver in Virginia. His whole venture, starting with his departure from Switzerland in 1709, was founded on the idea that Virginia had silver mines. In line with this idea, he and Michel had initiated a recruiting effort in the 1709 time frame for miners to work in the silver mines. They did not personally contact the miners but had hired another man, Johann Justus Albrecht, to do the actual recruiting in the vicinity of Siegen in Germany. He must have arrived there in 1709 or 1710.
From this effort, a number of people were recruited and they formed the First Germanna Colony. One of their first duties in Virginia was to defend the frontier and provide the seating for land acquisitions by Spotswood. They did this so well that Spotswood initiated an effort to secure more Germans for the seating of large quantities of additional land. This resulted in the Second Germanna Colony. Growth in the German Piedmont communities beyond the First and Second Colonies was mostly the result of the efforts of the Germans already in Virginia.
The existence of the Germanna Colonies depends on the decision of Francis Louis Michel to make a trip to Virginia, upon his purported discoveries of silver mines there, upon the desire of Christoph von Graffenried to escape from his debts, and upon Alexander Spotswood's hope that he had a silver mine. Had any one of these points not been true, there would have been no Germanna or Germanna Colonists.
I will examine some of these points in more detail but the summary now aims to show why we study these questions. Had these events not happened, you would not be reading this note today. In fact, you would not be here today.
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.