We had a short discussion about whether the Germanna colonists were the most westward point of European civilization along the Atlantic seaboard. As nearly always, when the discussion turns to the "most," a few qualifying words are necessary. The Atlantic seaboard eliminates the interior, where, it could be argued, the French were active. Also, it eliminates the Spanish in the middle Americas. Also, it is not stated, but the condition of being the most westward point arises because of the slope or slant to the east coast, which runs almost as much northeast to southwest as it does north and south.
Those of us who have occasion to drive up and down the coast are constantly reminded that the road runs east and west also. U.S. Highway 1, that legacy of the King's Highway, runs almost past the door of my house. At this particular point, when one is nominally traveling south, one is actually traveling slightly north for a short distance as the road turns generally to the west. When I attended my high school reunion in Oregon, two of us were from the east coast, I from Pennsylvania and Ralph from North Carolina. Yet I got the door prize for traveling the farthest.
So, the First Germanna Colony, when they were settled at Germanna in 1714, was the farthest west point of civilization. As the opening paragraphs state, the geography of the coast line helped to make this possible. Then, within Virginia, civilization had stopped at the "Fall Line", where the rivers from the west tumbled over the rocks in the transition from the Piedmont to the Tidewater. Because the rivers were the principal means of travel, certainly for commerce, little civilization had occurred beyond the Fall Line. Interstate Highway 95 follows the Fall Line approximately through Virginia. At Frederickburg (nonexistent in 1714), on I-95 one can see the falls of the Rappahannock. The falls of the James River occur at Richmond (certainly not in existence in 1714).
Germanna was about fifteen miles west of the Fall Line. In this isolated region, a group of people was needed for settlement, to provide security and the labor for building the roads. Isolated families were at a disadvantage. With Gov. Spotswood's interest in a silver mine in the area, the Germans were a natural development of the region, with the strength of the group for security, and the talents of the miners to work in the silver mine (it would not have been necessary to go this far west just to find land). And, so, when they were settled there, they were the westernmost point of civilization. But being the westernmost point or the frontier settlement does not usually last long. Soon others will leapfrog the previous frontier to become a new frontier. This happened to the First Colony. About four years after they came, the Second Germanna Colony was settled to the west of them. True, it was only two to five miles, but still it was to the west of Germanna.
When the First Colony moved to their permanent home at Germantown in today's Fauquier County, they were certainly on the frontier but they did not inherit the status of being "westernmost. " Germantown is almost due north of Germanna, so the move did not locate them any farther west, but it did put them into a very frontier position with few neighbors, in fact, almost no neighbors.
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.