Hank Z Jones writes about Henrich Ohrendorff, "Like so many other N.Y. Palatines, the German home of this Mohawk Valley family was Oberfischbach (8 km. w. of Siegen; church books begin 1670)." The families that he refers to emigrated from the Siegen area in the year 1709.
In the year 1710, Johann Justus Albrecht appeared in the area seeking people to go to Virginia to mine silver. Probably, stories had filtered back to Siegen of the problems that had been encountered in 1709 and 1710. But the reporters could at least say that large numbers of people had been sent along to New York (and other places). Therefore, there was an influencing factor on the people who had remained in Siegen and who were being recruited to go to Virginia.
Prior to this, the British colonies in North America had probably not been considered as a real possibility for the people who were seeking something better. The Holtzclaw and Häger families who were to leave in the future from Oberfischbach had something new to think about.
Whether this had an effect on Jacob Holtzclaw I can’t say, but probably it did. Certainly we know that when Jacob was in Virginia, he was instrumental in recruiting more people to come to there. As we say, this is the snowball effect. So the year 1709 was very important in getting emigration started and, once it was underway, the tempo increased.
Willis Kemper made a great distinction between "our people" (meaning the Siegerländers) and the Palatines. Unfortunately, he was off-base in his comparison. Whatever the reasons were that caused the Palatines to emigrate in 1709, the people from the Siegen area in that year must have had even more reasons, as a larger percentage of them emigrated than from the Palatinate, or any other region. But let’s lay all of this aside and note the impact that the 1709 emigration had. It was the start.
In some of the following notes, I will take a look at some of the Siegen, or Nassau-Siegen, history to see if it sheds any light on the reasons for immigration. Even if it does not, the history is interesting.
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.