Though we have no evidence that John and Anna Maria Thomas, with their children, came in the year 1717, they were very early to Virginia. Before John died, he and Anna Maria had two more children, Michael and Margaret. Michael was not naturalized, so he was presumably born in Virginia. After John died, Anna Maria married Michael Käfer (Kaifer). Their five children seem to have been born in the approximate period from 1720 to 1730.
Only in very recent years has the husband of Margaret Thomas been found. The will of Michael Käfer distorted the name so that it was not easy to make the identification, but Nancy Dodge led the way in showing that he was Henry Aylor, through which all of the Germanna Aylors descend.
There is a bit of a puzzlement between the Holtzclaw and Thomas families. John Holtzclaw, the eldest son of the 1714 immigrant Jacob, married a widow Catherine (Russell) Thomas, who had one Thomas son, Jacob. John Holtzclaw’s two youngest brothers, Jacob and Joseph, married Susanna Thomas and Mary Thomas, respectively, who were daughters of John Thomas, the eldest son of John Thoma and Anna Maria Blankenbaker.
Perhaps you might be inclined to think this is a coincidence but I do wonder whether it was or not. John Holtzclaw lived at Germantown as did his younger brothers. The Thomas girls lived in the Robinson River Valley. (On the present day maps, these localities are not even in the adjacent counties.) When one goes this far to find a wife, there is often a story, or an explanation, which tells why he went this far. With John Holtzclaw having a stepson, Jacob Thomas, and having two younger brothers, who went some distance to find wives, who happen to have the surname Thomas, I start to believe that one Thomas family was in some way a unifying link.
Outside of some fiction, which I will not report here, I do not have an answer to this puzzle. When B. C. Holtzclaw wrote his genealogies of the Holtzclaw family, he failed to comment on this strange coincidence. And, this has bothered me. Surely, when three children of Jacob Holtzclaw are involved with Thomas family members, it must give one a pause, and merit a comment.
The 1714 immigrant Jacob Holtzclaw was married twice, and the surname of the second wife is not known. It could be that she was from the Robinson River community, and therefore she was the link which brought two of her sons to the Robinson River community to find their wives. John Thomas, the father of Susanna and Mary, does not have an identifiable wife. She too might have been a link.
I have raised some of these questions before without any response. Maybe this time someone can add information which might be helpful.
(21 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.