Next, let us consider the colony of 1717, which may not have been a colony of 1717. That is to say, by the modern calendar, they may have left Germany in 1717, but it is possible that they did not arrive in Virginia until 1718.
Start with the time that they left Germany, which the pastor in Gemmingen pinpoints for us very exactly. He wrote, on 12 July 1717, ". . . expect to move away from here, wanting to take ship to Pennsylvania . ." This was very late in the year to be leaving Germany. One wonders what the delay was (assuming the pastor was correct, and the translation is correct). It probably took about a month to get to Rotterdam. Even though this trip was "downhill", as one took advantage of the flow of the Rhine River, there were about thirty to fifty principalities that one had to pass through. Each one of these had a customs house, where they wanted to inspect the goods, and to levy a customs fee. So let's put the people in Rotterdam in early August.
Then, they had to find a ship to London. This was probably not too hard, since there was quite a bit of cross-channel traffic; however, space had to be found for about eighty people, which may have taken a little while. By the end of August, they were probably in London. Finding a ship to take them across the Atlantic was probably time consuming, as the passenger season was essentially past. Also, passenger traffic was not a big enterprise in 1717. So finding a ship may have taken a little while.
When they did find a ship, say in early September, they had the misfortune to find one for which the master was Andrew Tarbett. They struck a bargain, and he said he would take them to Pennsylvania. Then a small disaster struck when Tarbett was thrown into Debtor's Prison. We have no information on how long he was there. The Germans said they had consumed much of their food before he was released. It becomes impossible to assign any times at this point.
Once the westbound trip had started, an average time was ten weeks. An excellent time was eight weeks, and three months was not unusual. All of these times could bring us up to the end of the December, and the beginning of January. Even if the arrival time had been in the range or January 1 to March 25, they would have said, by the calendar in use in Virginia, that their arrival was in 1717. As we can see though, there is a possibility that it could have been in 1718 by the modern calendar.
In discussing this point with Klaus Wust, he said it would be impossible to change the date because "1717" was cut into too many stones!
Many of the Debtor's Prison records still exist, but, unfortunately for us, there is a two-year gap from 1716 to 1718. If the records were available, it would help to fix who the captain was and the dates he was in prison.
(17 Apr 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.