Another early immigrant to the Robinson River Valley was the Tanner family whose German name was, to judge by the way that it was written at church, Gerber . German GERBER = English TANNER. Unfortunately, we do not know where the Tanner family came from. There is another related Germanna family, the Burdines, all of whom have a German ancestor, Catherine Tanner. The nationality of the Burdines is not certain so it makes it difficult to find the town or village or farm from where they immigrated.
William and John Carpenter were early to the Robinson River Valley, and we do know how they spelled their name, Zimmerman . Unfortunately, like some other names, Zimmerman occurs quite often in Germany, so searching for them is time consuming.
An individual who appears in several lists, e.g., the immigrant list of the Germanna Foundation , as an early immigrant is John Broyles II. It has been shown that this name is a misreading of the record at the courthouse. James Brown showed that there was no John Broyles II, and that, in fact, the name in the record was actually John BELL. (Please see Myths and Fallacies. on the Main BROYLES/BRILES Family History web page.)
Johann Rouse (probably Rausch in German, and also spelled RUSH later in America) was an early immigrant, since he had a land patent in 1728, in the Robinson River Valley. The land here was probably being divided up in the early 1720's, even though patents were not applied for, and issued, until later. The origins of John Rausch are unknown.
So the takings in this note are meager; there were no villages to describe. At least we were able to say that it would be fruitless to search for the home of John Broyles II (since he didn't exist!).
Following notes will return to the area of Siegen for the second wave of immigrations from that region. Then, we will return to later immigrants to the Robinson River Valley. If you think I have missed any immigrants in the time up to about 1730, please let me know.
(The James Brown that I mentioned earlier has died. He did some wonderful research, which he published in Beyond Germanna . As the editor of that Newsletter/Journal, I miss him.)
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.