John Blankenbaker's Germanna History Notes

Note 1017

As we continue our walk around William Byrd's library, we observe more than one hundred and fifty works of divinity.  The religious works include many sermons and books of devotion, and several Bibles in Greek, Latin, French, Dutch, and English.

There were many books in French, especially in the area of "Entertainment".  Perhaps there are two hundred of these, mostly novels, plays, poetry, and translations of the Classics.  In the Greek and Latin section, in the original languages, there are nearly three hundred works.  In the miscellaneous case, there are scientific and mathematical treatises, and books on architecture, drawing, painting, collections of music, including operas, philosophy, gardening, agriculture, distilling, cooking, and logic.

Perhaps because Byrd's land including iron deposits, there are several books on minerals.

The range and extent of the library were not matched anywhere else in America.  The library had an influence beyond Westover.  First, visitors observed and perhaps used it.  Many visitors set out to emulate the Byrds, perhaps not in numbers but in spirit.

Byrd himself wrote little.  His " History of the Dividing Line " was never finished by him.  He had set out to revise this work, but never finished it, and it was not published for another hundred years.  A private version of this work describes his compatriots on the survey in more detail with disguised names.  Knowledge of some of his writings leaked out and he was urged to publish, but he declined saying he was too busy, "...for I am always engaged in some project for improving our infant colony."

Among his projects were founding a city at the falls of the James River.  He planned to settle Switzers on his large tract on the Roanoke River, and as a consequence we have one of the interactions with the Germanna colonies.  The people from Switzerland had arrived at Rotterdam, where the ship "Oliver" was chartered by the emigration society that had recruited the people.  It was judged to have room for more people, and a large group from Freudenberg was taken on.  The voyage itself was disastrous and as a consequence, what would have been a major expansion of the Germanna Colonies, became only a handful of people.

Later he wrote " A Journey to the Land of Eden, Anno 1733 " and " A Progress to the Mines in the Year 1732 ".  Both of these are pleasing works.  Byrd also wrote for only his own eyes as an exercise in composition, and he appears to have used real people to populate his stories and sketches.  In one of these epistles, he appears to have been writing to a prospective father-in-law, and he gives an account of his income and net worth.  In 1717, he put his income at around seventeen hundred pounds per year and the value of his Virginia property at thirty-three thousand pounds.  He mentions two hundred and twenty slaves.
(31 Oct 00)