It has been a problem to identify the nationality of some names. I asked recently about the name Bledsoe and the answers which came in made it clear that the name was English, and perhaps quite early to Virginia. I want to ask about some more names, one in particular, in this note.
The family name is Rucker. This is both a geographical name in Germany, especially as a part of city or village name. It is also a family name. Sometimes it is spelled with a "u umlaut", i.e., ü. In the Virginia patent records, the first mention of John Rucker is in 1727 when he patented 977 acres of land, just to the south of Michael Holt. The only neighbor that John Rucker mentioned in his patent was Michael, and I tend to think that the neighbors most likely to get mentioned are of the same nationality. Michael was just to the south of John Broyles and these two are usually considered as the southern tier of the Robinson River German community, but perhaps we should extend our range to include the Ruckers.
In this same neighborhood there was a John Venton with 1000 acres in 1728. He mentions as neighbors:
Three of these four men are known Germans.
In 1730, Thomas Rucker patented 876 acres adjacent to John Rucker and Thomas Jackson. There was, in 1704, a mention of a Peter Ruckett in the land patents.
Perhaps the previous Peter Ruckett is to be identified with the Peter Rucker who was naturalized in Virginia in 1704. (I am now quoting from the " Underwood Family " by Ben Coke.) His nationality is said to be unproven but apparently he was not English if he were naturalized. The next most popular nationality was German, though at this date it might have been French (Huguenot). Peter died in 1743 and left several heirs, one of which was John, who is mentioned above. John was very active politically. He (John) had a sister, Mary, who married William Offill which sounds a lot like the German Apfel (i.e., Apple). A niece of John, Mary, married William Vawter, a family with connections to the Germans. John Rucker's sister, Margaret, married Isaac Smith (English), and this family had many German connections also.
On the whole, the Rucker family is probably German, perhaps French, which rather quickly became anglicized, while maintaining some German connections. (I am reminded of the Christopher Zimmerman family, in the Mount Pony area, which did much the same thing, and the reason was probably similar - they were almost surrounded by the English-speaking citizens.) Apparently, the Rucker family may have been here a while, longer than the other Germanna citizens. If anyone can add to the comments that I have made here, I and other readers on the list would appreciate hearing them.
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.