History is distorted for many reasons. One reason is tradition which is not a reliable guide, even if it does sometimes hint at the truth. Germanna history has its share of this. Imagination to fill in gaps was widely utilized by Willis Kemper. Ego trips fill pages. Copying, without verifying, what another person said, perpetuates the errors. History is revised to meet the needs of the authors. Consider this example of historical errors which appears in the Winter 1997 copy of the "Germanna" newsletter of the Memorial Foundation of Germanna Colonies in Virginia, Inc .
Quoting from this issue of "Germanna,"
"Brawdus Martin Germanna Visitor Center. An anonymous donation of $100,000 from a Kemper descendant has been made to the Germanna Foundation with the request that the new building be named for Brawdus Martin, a founder of the Germanna Foundation. Through the initial efforts of Brawdus Martin, who organized the first meetings at Germanna in the 1940's, the Germanna Foundation was formally organized in 1956. Brawdus Martin served as the President of the initial Germanna meetings."
Recent notes have examined how the Germanna Foundation came into existence. The comments of C. H. Huffman, taken from the "Germanna Record," show that Brawdus Martin had no part in the founding of the Germanna Foundation . At the time that Huffman met with Ernst Flender, there was no group which was active.
There is a false implication in the quotation that the 'Germanna meetings' were a part of the Germanna Foundation which is not true. Brawdus Martin was active in an earlier, unincorporated group which called itself " The Society of Germanna Colonists " but there was no formal connection between this group and the Germanna Foundation .
Brawdus Martin never had the title of president in the Society of Germanna Colonists . The "Journal" for the group, for which he was responsible, always listed him as chairman. He never held any position in the Germanna Foundation .
Ironically, there was no connection between the old Society and the new Foundation , because the activities of Martin were so disruptive to the Society. His poor scholarship and his generation of false material and evidence led to the rupture between Martin and Huffman and the falling apart of the Society of Germanna Colonies . After the Society ceased to function, the Memorial Foundation of Germanna Colonies in Virginia was organized through the efforts of C. H. Huffman and Ernst Flender, of which the latter was a very generous benefactor.
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.