We have been through the German homes, if known, of the First and Second Colonists. For some families we had to admit that we do not know the village of their origin, but on the whole it is surprisingly few that are unknown. As we continue in time, we will find that less is known about some of the later arrivals.
It has been said there was a third colony, and some have gone so far as to say it consisted of forty families. The fact is that while some people did come in the years just after 1717, they did not all come in the same year, and there were less than forty families. In other words, there was no third colony.
One family who probably came in 1719 was the Kabler family. This commenced a long sequence of people and families, who came from villages that had already sent emigrants to Virginia. In the case of the Kablers, the village was Sulzfeld, from where the Zimmermans came. There is a record of a birth of a Kappler child in 1713 in Sulzfeld, but even more telling is that Friedrich Kappler selected Christopher Zimmerman to be a sponsor at the baptism of his son Christoph on this occasion. In Virginia, the Kablers and Zimmermans were across-the-road neighbors. Both lived in the Mt. Pony area. Both men were coopers.
We must remember that when Christopher Zimmerman left in 1717 he planned on going to Pennsylvania. Christopher found himself in Virginia in December of 1717, or perhaps shortly thereafter. Before long he had to write back to Sulzfeld and tell people there where he was located. There was no organized mail system then and one had to be resourceful. Generally, this meant finding a ship's captain who, for a fee, would take your letter across the Atlantic and perhaps to Rotterdam directly. There the captain would find a ship that plied the Rhine River to take the letter along farther. In the last stages, a "runner" would deliver the letter (and probably expect a fee from the addressee). So Christopher Zimmerman must have written home shortly after arriving, perhaps before he had left the dock area. Within eighteen months of Zimmerman's landing, Friedrich Kappler would be leaving Sulzfeld. I have been amazed that these things could be conducted, under such poor conditions as this. In the case of the Kapplers, it would appear that some message from the Zimmermans would be the catalyst for his departure. Considering the common origin in Germany and the decision to settle in the Mt. Pony area in Virginia as neighbors, the arrival of Kabler could not have been a random event.
There was another very early arrival, but I have not seen the connection to a still earlier arrival. This is the Willheit family. Though the Cook family, which include a Reiner representative as Frau Koch, came from Schwaigern in 1717, these families did not seem that close to the Willheit family. Why did the Willheits pick Virginia and not Pennsylvania? Pennsylvania was much better known as an objective.
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.