Every half century in these notes, I interrupt the story in progress to bring you a bulletin. Actually, the bulletin is nothing but a general statement about the purposes of these notes, which are intended to inform and entertain subscribers. (If I can do both in any one note, then I feel that I have a winner.) Let's just look at the "inform" part.
The starting point in selecting the Germans of special interest is a group of Germans who came in 1714. (Actually, some of the Germans may have had families here before that, but we traditionally start with these.) These Germans proved so successful at keeping the peace on the frontier that the Lt. Gov. of Virginia, Alexander Spotswood, wanted more Germans to settle on the lands he proposed to take up to the west of Germanna, where the first group of Germans were living. He advertised his desires among the ship captains and one of them, Andrew Tarbett, hijacked a shipload of Germans, who had contracted with him to take them to Pennsylvania. He took them to Virginia instead, and they became the second group of Germans at or near Germanna. This group, in particular, had friends and relatives, who came also in the first few years after the second group had come.
By 1725, the first group of Germans had moved, and had been living for several years on land, about twenty miles north, that they had purchased in the Northern Neck. Once they were established there, they sought and invited friends and relatives to join them. From their initial site, they spread out to the north and to the west, across the Rappahannock River, where free land was available in the region known as the Little Fork. The second group, for the most part, moved west about twenty-five miles to the Robinson River Valley, where there was free land available. A smaller part of them settled southeast of Mt. Pony. There was enough available land around them so that their expansion was on the periphery of the initial settlement.
Eventually, the distinction between the groups became blurred as some of the first group moved to the Robinson River Valley, and as the second group expanded north toward the Little Fork. Up to the time of the Revolution, additions to the settlements were made with Germans newly arrived from the old country, and with Germans moving from other colonies or regions. It is hard to talk about any subset of all of these people as being "Germanna" people without inviting comments on the other Germans. So the rule has become that all Germans living on the east side of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the modern counties of Madison, Rappahannock, Fauquier, Culpeper, Orange, and their ancestral counties of Spotsylvania, Essex, Stafford, and Prince William are called Germanna people.
Not only are these notes concerned with the Germans in this region, but they are concerned with the people before they came, and they are concerned with the people after they left this region for new homes elsewhere. Because the Germans shared a region and culture with others in Virginia, the notes sometimes go into these topics as well.
(13 Dec 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.