The Culpeper militia was organized with officers and men. In the draft of 1781, there were several officers listed. Without their names, there were:
Colonels IIIII II Majors III Captains IIIII IIIII IIIII IIIII IIIII II Lieutenants IIIII IIIII I Ensign III
There are 51 officers by my count (which should be close). This is out of 1417 total personnel. So, the odds of an officer being selected on any one draw or selection would be 3.5 chances out of a hundred, or, the chance of not selecting an officer would be 0.965 or 96.5 percent. Now, in the actual draft, no officer was selected. The chance that would happen on a random basis, across 104 classes, is only slightly better than two chances out of a hundred. That is, it was very unlikely.
Either the officers themselves arranged that none of them would be selected, or the state headquarters arranged for this, because they did not want the officers to be selected. Apparently, the men who were selected were not assigned as a unit, but were placed where they could serve, based on their civilian skills. I am under the impression that they did not bear arms, routinely, but performed other duties which are essential to keeping an army on the move. Blacksmiths were set to blacksmithing. Experienced drivers of teams were assigned to the wagon crews. Some of the men were assigned to guarding or transporting prisoners of war. Several of them seemed to have sat on their hands.
Notice, in the list of the ranks above, that the militia seemed to be well supplied with colonels, but light on lieutenants. Military ranks were one of the major forms of title in Virginia under the British. There was no dearth of applicants for the positions of colonel. To prevent bitter feelings, it was necessary to have lots of colonels.
Not many of the Germans turned up in the upper echelon of officers. In the lower positions, there was Lt. Jacob Coones, Capt. Mark Finks, Ensign George Crisler, Lt. Michael Gaar, Ensign Adam Yager. Remember that not all of all Germanna citizens lived in Culpeper County. Germantown was across the Rappahannock River in Fauquier County.
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.