Using the events in the history of the Germanna Colonies as a typical series of events, one realizes how much of history is accidental. More often then not, things turned out as they did because of unforseen events. There would never have been Germanna Colonies had not Francis Louis Michel decided to go to America and have a look at it. Michel had no intention of setting off a migration of Germans to the Virginia Piedmont, but, indirectly, he did.
When Michel thought he had found silver in Virginia, it was not clear that he thought this was anything unusual. He was more interested in Swiss colonization. Had there not been a Christopher von Graffenried for whom silver could be the solution of his problems, there would have been no Germanna Colonies.
Had there not been a miscommunication between Graffenried and the German miners, there would not have been any Germanna Colonies. Given that the events up to the arrival of the German miners in London were accidents, at this point we see a deliberate action designed for a specific purpose. The determination of the miners to go on and their willingness to indenture themselves for four years was a purposeful action, not an accident.
Spotswood was pleased with the Germans at Germanna and wanted more Germans for a vast expansion to the west. He judged that Germans would be the ideal people for this. But it appears that the arrival of the second group of Germans was the result of a series of accidents. Had not the pirates taken the ship Agnis, then Andrew Tarbett would never have talked to Spotswood. As a consequence of this though he came to understand that Spotswood wanted a shipload of Germans. To add to the coincidences, had Tarbett's morals been higher, there would have been no second group of Germans. By chance when Tarbett was back in England, a group of Germans appeared, even though it was late in the season and beyond the usual time for Germans to be emigrating.
Let's face it; except for a whole series of accidents of fate, I would not be writing this today.
The history of Germanna is often told somewhat differently than I have been telling it over the past couple of months. How could the same story be told in such different ways? In some future notes, I will examine these other versions and trace them to the source of their errors.
One of the things that we will learn is that historians spend more time copying each other than in doing original research. As genealogists, we are already aware of this. It is no different with professional historians.
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.