Recently, there was a discussion as to where the Germanna Colonies are, or were. The answer to this question depends on who you are, and what you doing. If you want to search courthouse records, then you might want to start with Essex County, where there are a few records of our Germanna people. If you want to pull out a map and find the physical area where the Germanna people lived, then telling you Essex County would not be appropriate. Today's Essex County misses the mark by a good sixty miles.
It was about 1720 that the legislation creating Spotsylvania County came into existence (but it was not a functional county for another couple of years). Certainly there are records there that pertain to Germanna's citizens, including head right applications, naturalizations, and the infamous lawsuits by Spotswood against members of the Second Colony. Along about 1733, when the Germans at, or near, Germanna had left already, the records would be found for a while in Orange County. The First Colony never lived in Orange County (excepting a few of them). In general they had moved to Stafford County before Spotsylvania was created. Germantown found itself next in Prince William County, and finally, about 1759, in Fauquier County.
A few members of the First County found themselves in Spotsylvania, Orange, and Culpeper Counties when they took up land in the Little Fork, on the opposite side of the Rappahannock River from Germantown. About the middle of the century, Culpeper County was created, which consisted of today's Culpeper, Madison, and Rappahannock Counties. This was the end of the division into smaller counties in this region.
So we say the Germanna people lived in today's Culpeper, Fauquier, Madison, Orange, and Rappahannock Counties to define the physical area where they lived.
What about Boone County, Kentucky, or Rowan County, North Carolina? These are secondary sites. Our Germanna people had lived in one of the primary counties in Virginia before they moved there. Including the secondary, tertiary (that's my limit of spelling knowledge), or still later ones, in the definition does not help. We are interested in where it started. If it were known, I would bet that the majority of the counties throughout the U.S. have a Germanna descendant. Our basic question is not where they went, but where they started.
Still, for discussion purposes here on the Germanna Colonies List, we take a very lenient attitude, just because we probably would never know the full extent of Germanna people without considering geographical areas outside of the narrow definition above. Some people lived in the narrowly defined area for a short period of time, but they had to come from somewhere and go somewhere.
(03Jul01)
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.