Several people landed at Philadelphia with names that were the same as people who had come earlier, and settled in or next to the First Colony. I mentioned one of these, Matthias Hofmann, who settled with the Moravians in Pennsylvania. Another one was Johann Wilhelm Hofmann (probably no relation to the previous Hofmann), who was a brother to the 1714 John Huffman, and to the 1743 John Henry Huffman. He too settled in Pennsylvania. Johannes Brombach married Anna Juliana Kemper, and they settled in Pennsylvania. (Both of these had relatives in the Germanna community.) The Second Colony also had members, whose later immigrant relatives did not join them. We have seen examples of newcomers putting down their roots beside friends and relatives who were already there, but not everyone did this.
As we read the immigration lists of the Eighteenth Century, at Philadelphia, which was about the only place keeping such records then, we encounter names that are the same as some of the earlier names. Some of these people may have been relatives, but we do not know where they settled. We are looking for settlement in the vicinity of the earlier ones. So it takes fairly conclusive evidence to say that some of these immigrants did become Germanna "citizens."
One name at Philadelphia is Daniel Buttong, Bouton, or Button, who came in 1739. He probably was the originator of the Button family in the Germanna community. Research in Europe indicates that Daniel Button was related to the Youngs. Johannes Steinseifer left in 1749. and he was probably motivated to come to Virginia because his wife was a Schuster, and the wife of John Henry Huffman (Robinson River) was also a Schuster, but apparently not a sister. These two men were in contact by letter (a copy of which is in the archives at Siegen).
B. C. Holtzclaw essentially stopped searching for new additions to the German population after about 1750, even though the Germans were continuing to come, right up to the Revolutionary War. In fact some Germans came during the Revolution, with their transportation paid by the British government. The inventory of German families in Fauquier and Culpeper Counties is incomplete. There were more families than is popularly mentioned. One should keep a very open mind on this aspect.
Predominantly, the people from the Siegen area came in groups. Only a small percentage came as individuals. Of these, it appears most had a relative already here. So the people either traveled with someone familiar, either family or neighbor, or were headed for an area in which already lived relatives or former neighbors.
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.