Marc Wheat has located a number of very specific documents (or, of references to the documents) which are of interest. To me, the minutes of the October 2, 1713, meeting of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts are extremely interesting for the information they contain. Rev. Henry Häger, of what would be the First Germanna Colony, had asked for the support of the Society in the New World. The Society declined its help as, "...the case of Mr. Hager does not properly lie before the society."
This shows that the group must have been there at that date (unless you want to assume that Rev. Häger had gone on ahead of the others). At this particular moment, the group was in trouble, for they had journeyed from Siegen to London expecting to find Graffenried there. They expected that he would finance the trip to America. When they got there, Graffenried was not there. With the state of communications being what it was in those days, the Germans were in the dark concerning their future.
The Rev. Häger had applied for aid for himself and perhaps it would have been his intention to go on even if the rest of the group could not. He thought of the Society as a possibility because his son had secured aid from them. We can only speculate how much before October 2 the Germans had arrived. It might have been some number of weeks, and a little note of desperation might have been coming in. We do not know when Graffenried arrived, but it was probably not long after this date. We do know that he was home in Switzerland in December.
In his memoirs, Graffenried left a marginal note saying that he had heard the Germans left London in January. So it is very easy to imagine the Germans were in London for at least four months, and possibly longer. This much we can determine from a few scraps of information. This is why the various documents can be so important. Individually, they may not mean much, but taken together, they help tremendously in putting the picture together.
All of the Germans had a problem in supporting themselves. Graffenried helped in finding work for them, though he implies that the work he had found for them in building a dike or dam was overturned by flood waters. Probably all of the men that could work did work. But this would not have included Rev. Häger, who was retired because of his health. The Germans did have a strong sense of cooperation and apparently all of the money they had or earned was used in a common pool to support everyone.
We will never a full understanding of the events in London, but the items which help us certainly include some of the dates.
(20 Jul 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.