John Blankenbaker's Germanna History Notes

Note 1092

The recent notes, which generally had Trupbach as their central theme, were originally prompted by the request of a reader for more information about the Rectors.  Fortunately, there is quite a bit that is known.  Not only does this add to the Rector history, it adds to the history of the First Colony, and to emigration from Germany in general.

Here, in America, the revisions to the Rector history that have been made in the last ten years serve as a warning to all families.  When I started publishing Beyond Germanna about twelve years ago, there were some questions about the early history of the Rectors, but on the whole it seemed very secure.  Then John Gott dug around in the loose papers at the Fauquier Courthouse and found documents that required a revision to the history.  One man had been married twice, and apparently most of the children were by the second wife.

How does a court house get loose papers?  In this case, it appears that a lawsuit was never concluded.  Papers had been filed and dispositions had been taken, but the suit was never concluded.  The papers were never recorded, and were being held in the Pending file.  Eventually, it was recognized there would be no conclusion to the suit and the papers were consigned to a storage box, without being recorded.  After John Gott and I published the contents of the papers, John Alcock offered an interpretation of them.

There had been a difficulty in assigning the parentage of some of the men in the Rector family.  The best that had been offered was a contorted reading of the will of one man.  Now it was John Alcock's turn to find some loose papers that clarified and corrected the assignments that had been made.

Barbara Vines Little put her expertise with land records (and other areas) to work and found that one Rector man was really two men.  By the time all of these experts had finished, the early history had been revised in several ways.  (Nor was this the complete story.)

Now, I grant there was an expert pursuit of the problem by these people.  In no way do I wish to imply that there was not a skill factor in their research.  Still, there was a probability to be connected to the findings.  It was a lucky turn that the county commissioners at some point decided not to use the loose papers to start fires.  Commissioners did things such as this, and, had they done so in this case, we would never have suspected that John Rector, son of the immigrant John Jacob Rector, had two wives.  So it was a lucky event that the papers survived.  It was even a lucky event that there were papers in the first place.  Had not one individual been dissatisfied and brought suit, there would not have been papers.

There is a warning for researchers in all families.  How sure can we be that the stated history is really correct?  Can you really vouch that So-and-so was not married twice?  Even if the same name appears in the records as a wife, this is not hard proof that she is the same woman.  All of these events are only probabilities, which, with hard work, might be improved or actually corrected.
(10 Feb 01)