In 1711, Albrecht signed a statement in which he promised to give money from the American mines to the Protestant pastors of Siegen. Presumably this was to win their help or favor in his recruiting efforts. This must have been helpful as he was back in London in 1712, and engaged in an activity which leaves us mystified. In essence, he seems to have written a charter for a company (corporation), and perhaps was engaged in selling shares in it. By whose authority he was doing this is unknown. The document he prepared has been preserved in the Court Book of Spotsylvania County, Virginia . Written in German, no translation of it was known until Elke Hall made one. This was published in Beyond Germanna, volume 5, number 1 .
The document was essentially a Shareholder's Book, or the charter of what we would call a corporation. It makes specific reference to the gold and silver mines in South Carolina, "which will be built by the gentleman Johann Justus Albrecht, who is the Head Mine Captain". The story or words are hard to follow because there are more pages than there are sentences. So, we can only pick out phrases here and there. Reference is made to construction in South Carolina, which was completed on the fifth of January in 1709. (It may have been that Albrecht had been exploring in South Carolina and had returned to London, when he was hired by Graffenried and Michel, or it may be that Albrecht was just telling a story to make it seem real.)
Albrecht claims to have developed mines in South Carolina and was to have been responsible for the complete management and construction of the future works. The company was to sell shares. Long statements in the Shareholder's Book go into the procedure and rules for buying shares. If there were profits, they would have been paid every quarter. All officers must be trustworthy. The document was dated 26 May 1712.
There is no reference to "George Ritter and Company", the employer of Albrecht. Nor is there any reference to Graffenried or Michel. The tenor of the note is that Albrecht is "moonlighting", or working at another enterprise on the side, besides the work he is supposedly doing for George Ritter and Company. He may have been driven to do something like this because his support from George Ritter and Company had dried up. The investors in GRC had become discouraged very quickly when the initial reports came back from Graffenried in North Carolina. So Albrecht may have been left to his own resources. Overall, the events in Siegen and in London do not leave us with a very favorable impression of the character of Albrecht. On the other hand, had Albrecht not been something of a "snake oil promoter" we probably would not have had any Germanna Colonies to write about.
There is every appearance that Albrecht was on the ship which was carrying the German miners to Virginia. At this time there was optimism. Though the Germans had started out thinking they were going to be mining silver for George Ritter and Company, they now had good reason to think they would be mining silver for Alexander Spotswood. At least they expected to be gainfully employed. It depended, though, on whether Spotswood would accept the agreement to which others had committed him.
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.