This is the start of another half-century of notes and it is customary to comment on the scope of expression in these notes. Let’s take the word "Germanna" as a start. It was coined by Alexander Spotswood, the Lt. Governor of Virginia, from 1710 to 1722. He intended the word Germanna to denote Germans and Queen Anne. Because the policy of England toward foreigners in Virginia was not clear, he felt apprehensive about the Germans being there. By calling the place where he settled the Germans "Germanna", he was hoping this little bit of public relations would help to smooth out any rough spots with respect to Queen Anne. She raised no objections to their being there; in fact, she had earlier approved a land grant for a colony of Swiss in Virginia, who were now being replaced by a group of Germans.
Germanna is a 'place' and, in the course of time, every 'place' will be the scene of many events. For Germanna, the 'place' became the country seat of the Spotswood family, and the county seat of the new Spotsylvania County. It was a none too thriving community, especially after the county seat was relocated. During the Civil War, it was the scene of assorted military actions. What I like to emphasize out of all of this are the Germans and the physical features that they knew.
Two groups were closely associated with Germanna. The First Germanna Colony lived there. The Second Germanna Colony lived up the Rapidan River, starting about two or three miles. They probably went to church where Rev. Häger was preaching, but this came to an end when the First Colony moved away. This is the site of the courthouse where the lawsuits by Spotswood against the members of the Second Colony were held.
But the First Colony was there only four and a half years; the Second Colony was near there for seven years. After this they spread out to the north and to the west, respectively. So the Germanna episode really does not cover much of the history of these people, but we use it as a verbal symbol for them. The word does have in it the idea of their origins. The significance of the word has been extended just because it does catch the "Germannaness" of a much larger group of people. The majority of the Germanna people never saw the place called Germanna. We choose to use the umbrella to cover the much broader group.
Technically, the area where all Germanna people lived is the Piedmont (the foothills), east of the Blue Ridge Mountains, extending down to the Tidewater lands. Or, if you want to get out a modern map, locate the counties of Madison, Rappahannock, Culpeper, and Fauquier. Even this area is not an exact definition as Germanna itself is not in any of these counties, but in Orange. That is the advantage of the Piedmont definition which is larger, but most people have a hard time finding the Piedmont on a modern map.
However, having said all of this, we take note that our Germanna people interacted with others over a wide geographical area. Therefore we do not place any restrictions on the discussion while emphasizing the one hundred or so German families that did live in the narrowly defined area.
(11 Aug 00)
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.