In my search for the first home of the 1717 Germans, I assumed that all references to the Germans, such as I had found in the Byrn lease, would be in the Spotsylvania County records. Joy Q. Stearns found several references in the Orange County leases. Up to the middle of the century, the Great Fork lay in Orange County after it was formed.
Her first find was a lease to John Bond on 14 July 1735. It includes metes and bounds, which the Byrn lease did not have, and the starting point is "the lower corner of lot 18 of the German tenements on the Rapidan River". The Bond lease lay on the west side of Brook's Run, which is three to four miles up the Rapidan from Fleshman's Run. Thus, the implication is that the tenements were spread out more than I had envisioned. When Spotswood said "closely joined" he meant that the farms were next to each other, not the houses. The Bond lease includes metes and bounds along with a map which shows that there are two houses on the property. These would have been the homes of the Germans.
Several other leases in the 1740 time period, mostly made by the executors of Spotswood's estate, mention "north side of the Rapidan", "branches of Potato Run", "lot 9", "lot 8", "40,000 acre tract," "lot 6", "Spade's Run", and "old German lot on the river". [When Spotswood went off to war, he had made several leases, but never recorded them in the county records. After he died, the executors made public records of the leases.]
From the Bond lease, the locations of two of the tenements (homes) are known rather closely (on the west side of Brook's Run). The eighteenth century evidence that Prof. Sanford found was nearer to Fleshman's Run. And some lease references were found close to Potato Run. The settlement pattern seems to be farms about every half-mile up the river and along the river, with another layer, or set, of farms to the north of this. Thus, the homes were about one-half mile from each other.
It is to be hoped that a more active physical search can be conducted for evidence of these homes.
In telling the story of these homes on the north side of the Rapidan River, I got ahead of the main theme of the history. I did this to prove that the expansion of the Beverly tract on the south side of the Rapidan River, to include another 27,000 acres on the north side, occurred before the Germans came. In other words, the partners had made their plans for the 40,000 acres first, and were looking for settlers second. Spotswood had claimed that the settlers came first and the land expansion came afterward. In doing so, he was claiming the additional land had been for the purpose of accommodating the Germans, not himself. But it is seen from the evidence that this was not so.
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.