On April 24, 1949, about 85 people met at the ruins of the "Enchanted Castle" for the First Public Basket Picnic Party . Minutes of the meeting were prepared by Rhetherford B. Martin, who had been instrumental in organizing the meeting. The spring day was marred by high winds and a chilly air. Rather than hold a formal meeting, R. B. Martin mingled among the crowd, and, as a result, the name " Society of Germanna Colonists " was chosen, bylaws were adopted, and interested persons were made directors.
A large percentage of the people were descendants of John Kemper, including R. B. Martin. It was decided to publish a Journal and the first pages, of about a hundred pages, were prepared by R. B. Martin, himself a descendant of the Kempers. As might be expected under these circumstances, references were made in the Journal to the work of Willis Kemper, though he was seldom identified as the source of the material. We have already been through the books of Willis Kemper, so I will not repeat the errors here.
One statement, which did not come from Willis Kemper, was, "After four long years of hot summers and cold winters of servitude, the colony [First Germanna Colony] disagreed with Governor Spotswood's principles. They held a pow-wow among themselves and decided to leave." While I believe that statement is correct, I doubt the following continuation, "Not owning animals, they built carts from hickory and pine and wheeled their earthly possessions 18 miles to Germantown, Virginia . . ." I believe they did own animals such as cows. [Beef was mentioned as a food by John Fontaine.] Spotswood made it a practice to place cows with the people on his land. The people tended the cows and, at the end of the relationship, cows equal to the original cows plus one-half of the increase were returned to Spotswood. The people could keep one-half of the increase.
Quotations from W. W. Scott in his book, " History of Orange County, Virginia ", which was published in 1907, carried forward the ideas of Willis Kemper, which are repeated under the guise that they originated with Scott.
Though the " Society of Germanna Colonists " adopted bylaws, the group was never a formal legal entity. During the first year, the expenses of the Society were paid largely by R. B. Martin while several other people contributed services. Of the five officers elected at the first meeting, four of them had a Kemper connection, and two had a Hitt connection. (The secretary was a descendant of Peter Hitt, and she had married a Kemper descendant). The Kemper connection is more evident in the original invitation to the meeting which said, " . . . the descendants of John Kemper 1st submit this invitation to the descendants and friends of any and all of the [Germanna] colonists to bring their luncheon baskets and join us in a picnic at Germanna Ford, on April 24, 1949, at 11:00 A.M."
R. B. Martin made one statement that I have not seen elsewhere. He states the Germans tried to recover gold from the deposits in the veins in the area but they were unsuccessful. Gold was later mined successfully in the area of Germanna but I have never seen any evidence that the Germans tried to recover it. According to Spotswood, they did try to recover silver from the mine of which he was a part owner. In fact, that was the reason they were in Virginia.
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.