Continuing with the biography of Alexander Spotswood, by Leonidas Dodson, he gives one of the best accounts of the law passed by the Virginia assembly creating Spotsylvania (and Brunswick) County. This was the law that specified that land would be free, though it was subject to final approval in England. The process of interpreting this law and getting the provisions clarified went on for several years and caused much grief for Spotswood.
As an example of how the English authorities could intervene with legislation passed in Virginia, Dodson cites the law which said no convicts could be exported to Virginia. In England, this law was disallowed because the people in the business of transporting convicts to Virginia said that it would put them out of business. This was the climate that existed when the Board of Trade told Spotswood that, if an iron smelting business were started in Virginia, it might be suspended. Spotswood would hardly have put any money into any business that was as tenuous as this. In the decade starting in 1710, Spotswood put far more of his money into naval stores than into the iron industry.
Again, as an example of how Spotswood proposed and secured legislation which helped him financially, the assembly passed his proposal for a bounty of six thousand pounds on naval stores. This was in 1722. A proposal for a bounty on pig iron was not passed at this time. Spotswood's iron furnace was just coming into steady production. The previous year, Col. Byrd had informed the Board of Trade that Spotswood was producing iron at his works. To judge by the comments of other people, apparently the iron works had some problems at that time.
Dodson certainly found many documents in England which helped him but he did not search as thoroughly in the courthouses of Virginia. He claimed the Germanna tract was Spotswood's first land acquisition, but the deeds in the Essex courthouse show that Spotswood became a partial owner, in 1713, of the 4,020 acre tract which was thought to contain a silver mine. These deeds show who the others were that were associated with Spotswood in this venture. Dodson did suspect that Spotswood, Graffenried, and others were involved and he was correct.
Dodson had serious errors in his dates. He failed to convert old style dates to the new calendar and reported the year as though it were new style. Thus, he says that Sir Richard Blackmore wrote in February 1717 that he intended to establish an iron works in Virginia. This date, though, was old style, and Dodson reported it as a new style date. By our calendar we would say it was in February of 1718. Dodson errs in a similar way on the date of the iron mine patent, which he says was February 20, 1719. Without any qualifications, he should have said it was February 20, 1720. That the 1717 date was old style, is born out by Spotswood's statement that the letter came about the time that the second group of Germans came. The patent date can be verified by consulting the original patent.
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.