In the last note, in the middle of the next to last paragraph, I omitted the word "not" at one point. Also the whole sentence was worded in a very clumsy way. What I was trying to say was some Germans were sent to America so that their fellow citizens would not have to support them. Some people led marginal lives and required financial help. Sometimes the easiest out for their fellow citizens was sending them to America.
I closed the last note with the thought that Germanna resulted from the Swiss jailing the Anabaptists for their religious beliefs. I know that it sounds strange but I will show why it is probably true.
For a century and a half, the city fathers in the Swiss towns had been expelling Anabaptists from the country, especially from Bern. They also were holding them in jails. Earlier they had tried executions, some of them of the worse kind. In spite of these strong measures, the Anabaptists had grown in numbers, and were thorns in the side of the church (Reformed), and of the city fathers. The trip that Franz Michel, from Bern, made to Virginia, starting in 1701, seems to have, as its primary objective, the location of a place for a Swiss colony. Probably, Michel had in mind finding a place to which all Swiss could move, but especially the Anabaptists.
On Michel's second, and longer, trip he explored a lot more land, including going into the Shenandoah Valley. This was about 1707. He was not alone, but he was with other people who professed to know something about minerals. The idea became embedded in his mind that the upper watershed of the Potomac River was the site of silver mines.
When he returned to Bern, Michel found a very willing listener in Christoph von Graffenried, who was in need of some enterprise to revive his sagging fortunes. Michel was still pursuing the colonization scheme, and the city fathers had designated fifty to one hundred Anabaptists, whom they wanted to send to America. Michel and Graffenried obtained a contract with the city fathers to take these people to America. First, they had to negotiate with the English for land. The early attempts to secure land had not yielded anything. Apparently, Graffenried was able to help tremendously, and land was secured.
As Graffenried and Michel considered the possibilities, they decided they were in the wrong business. Silver mining could be much more profitable than taking Swiss to Virginia; however, while they had commitments to fulfill for the colonization, they decided to start the silver mining project by recruiting the miners for the silver mines while they were getting the members of the Swiss colony settled. So, accordingly, in 1710, they hired Johann Justus Albrecht to recruit the miners, and told him to start in the area around Siegen.
Had the Swiss not been persecuting the Anabaptists, it is likely that Michel would not have searched for land where they could be placed. One of the byproducts of this search was the "discovery" of the silver mines. Without the colonists, it is doubtful that Graffenried would have been involved. Without him to promote the silver mining, there would have been no recruiting in Siegen.
(27 Mar 01)
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.