One of the success stories in finding a Germanna colonist has occurred in the last year and a half, and was the result of work by Louise and Jim Hodge, with some assistance from others. The man of interest to the Hodges was Charles Frady , nationality unknown. Though the name Frady looks simple, it just did not show in records before 1780. There were variants in the spellings, several in fact, which in itself is a clue that the name might not be English. In a 1790 Culpeper County, Virginia, deed the neighbors of Charles Frady had names appearing to be German, suggesting that Charles himself might be German. Plotting of the land confirmed that he was living in the Robinson River Valley where the German language church was the one known today as Hebron.
Looking through the records of the church, one article, recently translated from the German by Elke Hall, and published in Beyond Germanna , had a name that warranted more investigation, Carl Vrede . Checking with Elke, she suggested that a German pronouncing his Vrede name would be understood in English as Frady . So Charles Frady might be a case of converting the first name to the equivalent English name and of keeping the sound in the last name. Elke furthermore suggested that the name was unusual as it was not a southern German name but from farther north. The spelling of Carl with a " C " instead of a " K " also suggested this. In the church record, two other names which could also be "Frady" were Vorete and Wrede . The time of appearance, and the general locality in Germany from which the man could have come, suggested that perhaps he was a " Hessian ", a soldier who was forced to come to America to fight for the British.
A search in the German telephone directory confirmed the general northern source of the name. But it also showed that the name might have been Wrede as that was a more popular name than Vrede .
Using both the names Vrede and Wrede , a search was made through the German military records of the men who served in America. The task was not especially easy because more than 30,000 Germans served in the war in America. A monograph was found which listed the Brunswick soldiers who deserted the English army. This included a Carl Simon Wrede who deserted at Winchester, in Virginia, in 1781; however, this monograph did not give any military units which would describe the service performed by Wrede or possibly his place of enlistment and other early details.
The information about Carl Simon Wrede was consistent with the known information about Charles Frady . He deserted in 1781, he was in the Hebron Church Register in 1782, and he was in the Culpeper tax lists of 1783. Obviously, he was readily accepted into the German community.
Later research has disclosed his military unit, his age, his height, his religion, and his general place of origin. He was not a Hessian but a Brunswicker. Knowing his military unit, it is possible to retrace his steps from his departure from Germany in 1776 until 1781. The majority of the time he was a prisoner of war, held either in Massachusetts, or in Virginia. It is very doubtful that he ever went back to Germany. Unfortunately, he is identified with more than one woman as his wife, which creates some doubts about who was the mother of his children. Very likely she, or they, came from the Robinson River community. So far, twelve children have been tentatively identified. Before long, he moved to North Carolina.
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.