The last note closed with an example of how Willis Kemper (and his co-author) let their imagination go to work when they had no facts. I will continue with Kemper and discuss his (erroneous) version of Germanna history.
Kemper notes that Alexander Spotswood was appointed Governor of Virginia in 1710. (More correctly, he was appointed Lt. Governor.) The story continues, "It was not long until he discovered evidences of iron ore in districts toward the Blue Ridge." The facts are that there is no evidence that at any time did Spotswood discover any iron. From the justification for his expense reports, there is no mention that he was near, or even in the vicinity of, the Blue Ridge Mountains in the months following his arrival.
In the first few months, October, to be more exact, he did write to the Council of Trade and tell them he would propose that the Colony start an iron works to be based on the iron mines lately discovered. In doing this, Spotswood was in error (as his later writings show). Iron had been known in Virginia for over a century, and a smelting furnace had even been built in 1622. This was on land belonging now to Col. Byrd, which was located on Falling Creek, where it flows into the James River (a few miles below Richmond today). It was known in England that Virginia had good sources of iron, and this knowledge had appeared in books in England published before 1600. The "iron mines lately discovered" were the iron mines of a century earlier.
Kemper says that Spotswood urged, in numerous letters, that the Lords of Trade have the Queen take up the iron project, after the Assembly in Virginia had given it a "thumbs down". Actually, there is only one letter from Spotswood on the subject; the other letters were on a different subject, silver , not iron .
Kemper came to erroneous conclusions because he did not understand, or chose to ignore, or was unaware of, Graffenried's primary purpose in being in America. First and foremost, Graffenried's motivation for coming to America was to engage in silver mining, not to start a colony in North Carolina. Graffenried undertook the North Carolina work because, in doing so, he obtained free transportation to America for his Swiss colony. When this colony was in place, he planned on going to Virginia and starting work on the silver mines. He had already made plans for this by sending Johann Justus Albrecht to Siegen to recruit miners in 1710.
When Graffenried came up to Virginia in 1712, one purpose of the trip was to locate the silver mines. He made an active physical exploration of the upper Potomac watershed. This was NOT at the request of Spotswood, as Kemper says, but something that Graffenried did on his own initiative and in accordance with his plans he had made in 1710, before he had left England and before he met Spotswood.
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.