In 1907, W. W. Scott wrote " A History of Orange County, Virginia ". His credentials were good as he was a very senior librarian for the state of Virginia, and a member of the State Historical Society. One of the twenty-four chapters is devoted to Germanna, and two other chapters are related.
On the whole, the history of Germanna is improved as compared to some of the works we have been examining, such as Slaughter's and Green's. Scott, along with many others, mentions three German colonies, but, as everyone else fails to do, he does not give any details of the 1719, or third colony, which was nonexistent. (It would be interesting to see how this false idea originated.)
By this time, some Germanna history was appearing in the " Virginia Magazine of History and Biography ", and Scott references this publication. One of the writers in this journal was Charles E. Kemper of Staunton, Virginia. (I will not be examining these articles at this time.)
Scott, basing his conclusions on the records of importations used to obtain headrights, concludes, as others have done, that the bachelors in the first group of Germans were married when they came. (Several of the men were bachelors when they left Germany, and remained so until after their arrival in Virginia, but the proofs of importation are ambiguous as to when they were married.)
Scott used material from Willis Kemper, which is not identified as such, and thereby makes his first serious mistake. This unidentified material says:
"These colonists were induced to leave their homes in Germany by the Baron de Graffenried, acting for Governor Spotswood, who was then making preparations to develop his iron mines in the vicinity of Germanna, and this business enterprise of the Governor was the sole cause of their coming to America and Virginia."
A casual reader might assume that this statement originated with Scott, and never know that it came from Willis Kemper. Again, this is part of the process by which the errors of a family historian crept into the general history of Virginia and received the stamp of approval of a non-Germanna descendant.
In speaking of the second group of Germans, Scott says they came from Alsace, the Palatinate, and adjacent districts in Germany. He was not alone in saying this, as the Rev. Stoever of the early 1700's was the source. The Reverend was simply in error, and it shows, as several other examples given here also show, that the early people were not always correct.
Scott tells that he had read the " Kemper Genealogy ", which, he says, is the best account of the German's history. He even quoted from it without telling us so. The sentence in the paragraph above shows that Scott did not know and understand the reasons that the Germans came to America.
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.