William Byrd lived another twelve years after his visit to Spotswood in 1732. At his death, he was buried in his beloved garden at Westover.
It might be said that he was the model of the eighteenth century Virginia gentleman that so many others aspired to, even outside of Virginia. His own model was apparently the landed aristocracy of England. He devoted most of his resources to obtaining land. At his death he held title to almost 180,000 acres of good Virginia land. Industrial enterprises apparently appealed little to him. After investigating the problems and opportunities in iron, he took no action. Perhaps the problem lay in acquiring enough capital.
William Byrd was never free of money problems. The debts that he acquired after the death of his father-in-law haunted him for the rest of his life, sometimes to the point of embarrassing him.
He outlived Alexander Spotswood by four years, and he outlived his brother-in-law, Robert Beverley, by more than a score of years. All three of these men touched, in some way, the life of the Germanna Colonists, though Byrd contributed the least. His interest to us is mostly in the written record that he created, either by his own writings, or by testimony before boards.
Robert Beverley was in the land partnership with Spotswood that settled the Second Germanna Colony on the Spotsylvania tract. He actively encouraged them to grow grapes, a favorite crop of his.
It was Spotswood who "recruited" the Second Germanna Colony, and let the captains of ships know that he wanted Germans as servants. His efforts paid off, as the ship Scott brought seventy-odd Germans to Virginia.
Spotswood neither recruited the First Germanna Colony, nor was he the decision maker which was responsible for their voyage, first to England, then later to Virginia. The First Germanna Colony left the area around Siegen, expecting to be in the employ of the George Ritter and Company, and engaged in the mining of silver. When that operation went bankrupt, Nathaniel Blakiston decided to send them on to Virginia, at the expense of Spotswood, but Spotswood did not participate in this decision. Spotswood profited tremendously by the Germans, both the First and Second Colonies. The First Colony found the iron ore for him (but did not build his iron furnace). The Second Colony secured 40,000 acres of land for Spotswood.
Spotswood fared much better in his relations with the Germanic people than William Byrd did. Byrd had attempted to recruit people from Switzerland, but the effort was a catastrophe. As a by-product of this, there was an involvement with the Germanna citizens, as the ship chartered to bring Byrd's Switzers also was to bring about fifty people from around Freudenberg. The majority of these never made it to Virginia.
(08 Nov 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.