The last note used the word "luck" several times. This was deliberate, to emphasize the accidental nature of the whole Germanna experience, starting with Francis Louis Michel several years earlier. The entire experience seems improbable yet it did happen.
With the second group of Germans leaving so late in the year from Germany and having a delay in London, while Tarbett found his way out of the clutches of debtors' prison, it is doubtful that they arrived in Virginia before December 31, 1717; however, if they arrived before the next March 25th, they still would have said they arrived in 1717 since, in the English colonies, the new year did not officially start until March 25. In Germany, the year 1718 started on January 1 but the Germans were now on English soil where the old year lasted until March 25.
The Germans were very bitter on finding out they were in Virginia and not in Pennsylvania.
Spotswood put the number of Germans at seventy-odd, while the Germans put the number at eighty. While it might be argued that Spotswood counted only those for whom he and his partners paid the passage money, the Germans would surely have counted every German on the ship. Seventy-odd and eighty are too close to being the same number to argue there was a difference. While the land in the 40,000 acres Spotsylvania tract had been for a partnership originally, each of the partners paid for specific people. Spotswood paid for forty-eight whose names have been preserved. There is good evidence that Robert Beverley was a partner in the enterprise and that he paid the passage money for some of the people, but the exact number is unknown. How many other partners there were is unknown. Probably Spotswood and Beverley were the major partners.
The Germans were settled on the north side of the Rapidan River in what Spotswood called a pattern of "closely joined" homes. Subsequent deeds show that the homes were about one-half mile apart. Progress with the Indians had been rapid, since only four years earlier the Germans on the other side of the river had been installed in a palisade for protection. Now it was judged that isolated homes were adequate.
Spotswood said he provided them with a stock of cattle and other things necessary for their support without receiving any rent from them. Though he said they were freemen, not servants, later events show that he claimed the opposite. He also made it clear that a primary purpose of their settlement was to raise naval stores. The Rev. Hugh Jones left a description, which was probably second hand, of their settlement. Later we will give this. It does not jibe very well with the Germans' description of life on the Spotsylvania tract.
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.