Perhaps, the last note did not make clear just where Neuenbürg was located. "Ours" is just about 25 miles south of Heidelberg. It is about the same distance almost due west of Heilbronn. The population in the general vicinity is low. Besides the family of Anna Barbara Schöne, which, counting sons, daughters, son-in-law, daughters-in-law, grandchildren, and Michael Käfer, had a total of seventeen people, there was another family, the Scheibles. Besides the parents, Johann Georg and Maria Eleanora, there were three daughters: Anna Martha, Anna Elisabeth, and Anna Maria. Two other Anna Marias had died before the birth of the Anna Maria who survived. Had there been sons, we might be better acquainted with the Scheibles. The parents were older, almost as old as Anna Barbara Schöne, who was 53. Since Alexander Spotswood described the Second Colony as seventy odd people (the Germans themselves used the number eighty), this means that Neuenbürg, as small as it was, contributed over one-quarter of the people that made up the Second Colony.
The Blanckenbühlers had not been long-term residents of Neuenbürg. Within a couple of previous generations they had moved from the East, so we can associate these earlier villages with the group also; but I will defer a discussion of these localities. In passing here, I will mention that the Käfers were from Zaberfeld, about halfway to Heilbronn, and a little to the south. Oberderdingen is where Matthias Blanckenbühler met his wife, and where, apparently, they were living when the son Jerg was born. This is about eight miles to the southeast of Neuenbürg. Some other relatively close villages were the home of other Second Colony members. In general though, Neuenbürg is on the western edge of the region from whence the Second Colony members came and is not centrally located.
One other village, Gemmingen, contributed about the same number of people to the Second Colony. Some of the people from Gemmingen do not appear clearly in Virginia but, of those who do, they have an excellent claim to being members of the Second Colony. The departure of six families from Gemmingen was recorded by the village pastor in the death register. The six families are the Bekh (Beck?), Schmidt (Matthaus), Schmidt (Hans Michael), Weber, Klaar, and Mihlekher. There were relationships among these individuals, as the two Smith families were headed by brothers. Susanna Weber was a Klaar (Clore), so these two families were related. The other two families are more mysterious. The eventual fate of the Bekh family is unknown. The Mihlekher family is on Spotswood's importation list, but that's the last time we hear of them by this name.
( NOTE from webmaster of this web site: Does anyone have any "guess" as to what happened to the MIHLEKHER family? Does anyone have a "guess" as to what the actual German name might have been, and what it might have been changed into by English-speaking scribes? )
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.