Starting back with Trupbach, all of the villages that we have been talking about are small. At the most, they have one church. Siegen, Heidelberg, Heilbronn, and their ilk are not villages, either in the eighteenth century or now. These towns can be found on a respectable map but the villages require a detailed map and often an index to their locations.
Gemmingen is just such a village which has one church and three or four streets on each side of the main drag. Besides the church, the town hall, and the market square, there was the "castle" of the ruling family, in this case, von Gemmingen.
When the pastor wrote, in 1717, that a number of the people from Gemmingen were going to Pennsylvania, he made it clear as to why they were going. It was to improve their economic well-being. He also took note that the emigration was not strictly a Gemmingen affair, but that many people from surrounding villages were planning on going. The people from Gemmingen did not make it to Pennsylvania, as Capt. Tarbett of the ship Scott , abetted by Alexander Spotswood, shanghaied them and took them to Virginia.
The two villages of Neuenbürg and Gemmingen contributed about one-half of the people in the Second Colony. There is no evidence that the people in these villages were even aware that the others were going. From the pastor's comments, there was a general awareness that many people were going, but specific details were probably lacking.
One other village was the source of several families or individuals who settled in the Robinson River Valley in Virginia, but these individuals did not come at the same time. This village was Schwaigern, which was a little bit bigger, as it has two churches (it is not clear how many there were in 1717). Schwaigern was down the road about four miles from Gemmingen. Or, as the Germans of the time would have said, "It is one hour away." By this they meant that it took one hour of walking to go between the places. This measure assumed that one could walk about three of our miles in one hour.
Johann Michael Koch married Barbara, daughter of Friedrich Reiner. This is recorded in the Lutheran Church in Schwaigern in 1716. They came in 1717 to Virginia, and appear on Spotswood's importation list as Michael and Mary Cook. There were no children yet.
Though there were not a large number of people from Schwaigern in 1717, many came from there in the following years. In fact, it would appear that the main export product of Schwaigern was people.
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.