In 1926, Claude Lindsay Yowell wrote " A History of Madison County, Virginia ". It is a broadly based book and only a fraction of it treats the German element of Madison County This element is much the same as the second group of Germans, plus many later additions.
Yowell's language is confusing when he refers to the original distribution of land in Madison. He says, "Later, Governor Alexander Spotswood patented land in what is now Madison County to Germans settlers, believing this land to be his by a grant given him by Queen Anne." Spotswood never patented any land to the Germans as he was out of office before they acquired their land. Furthermore, Spotswood owned no land in the Madison County area. Yowell notes that Lord Fairfax and the Virginia government contended as to who owned the land in the Great Fork of the Rappahannock. He declares that when the question was decided in the 1740's in London that the decision declared the Germans' patents were to remain valid. Noting the confusion of Yowell about land, I would like to see the original decision before I duplicated the statement of Yowell.
Yowell repeats that Spotswood used the second group of Germans in his iron mines near Germanna, which is not true; however, he was not alone in making this statement.
The first set of German families to Madison included, according to tradition, Carpenter, Finks, Hoffman, and Souther. Some of these families were early, but they were not in the first wave to Madison County. (Madison County did not come into existence until 1792, but it is used to define the geographical area more sharply.)
The Hebron Church was organized, according to Yowell, by a colony of Germans who had emigrated from Germanna, and a few years before from Holland. Perhaps Yowell was confused by the common name for the church which was the "Old Dutch Church". In general though, Yowell follows Huddle on the history of the church. He misled his readers by stating the church farm of 685 acres, purchased from Thomas Farmer, was at a cost of only five shillings. This implied that the farm was a gift. Actually, the five shillings arose from the peculiar way in which Virginians transferred land in a two-step process. He also stated that Hoffman Chapel, a German Reformed church, was built with some of the funds from the Lutheran's appeal for funds in the 1730's. This is probably not true.
In noting that James L. Kemper was one of the most famous men to have lived in the county, Yowell states, following Slaughter, that the Kempers came from Oldenburg.
On the whole, Yowell's writings are not very insightful and they depend too much on tradition. He consulted very few original records and used secondary sources or oral reports. (This comment is aimed at the role of the Germans in Madison County.) This is very little in the book that one would want to quote though it is of interest to read.
[I believe that the book has been reprinted; maybe a reader could provide us with details.]
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.