John Blankenbaker's Germanna History Notes

Note 1216

In the last note, Charles Kemper was mentioned for his series of articles which pertained to the proposed Swiss colonies in the Valley of Virginia (the Shenandoah Valley).  The report that we have from him is a secondary report.  That is, we are not reading the originals of the underlying documents.  I am a believer in reading the underlying documents whether it is a court house document, or a record on file in the Public Record Office in England.  Sometimes, just seeing one word in the original document will change the interpretation of an event.

[Another Note from the Editor and Web Site Manager:  When John refers to "underlying" documents, or "original" documents, he is referring to "Primary Source Documents".  There are very few of us who can document every name, date, place, or event in our databases by actually reading a Primary Source Document, or a photocopy or Xeros copy of it.  Most of us depend on what are called "transcriptions", or "secondary" documents.  A "secondary" document is one that is produced by someone looking at a "Primary" document and copying it down on paper and re-typing it.  You should be able to see that merely "copying" from a Primary to a Secondary document can, and often does, lead to mistakes.  There are often passages where the original handwriting just can't be read -- this leads to interpretations or "guesses" by the transcriber.  Other problems with transcribing are misspellings, abbreviations, and translating from a non-English language.  GWD]

As an example, for years, i.e., indefinitely, it was reported that a court house record(s) reads "...the Second Germanna Colony members came " with " Capt. Scott.  If one gets the original of this, you will find that what is written is not " with ", but " in " Capt. Scott.  Just that slight little difference raises a lot of questions, in fact, enough questions that one begins to question the original interpretation.  In line with using the original documents, the Library of Virginia has microfilmed many records from the Public Record Office.  And something else they have, which is very useful, is that they have indexed the material, so that one can do a search by the name of a ship's Captain or by the name of the ship.  So, it is easy to do an on-line search from your own computer for ships of the name of Scott and for Captains of the name of Scott.  The former exists in the right time frame while the latter, Capt. Scott, does not exist.  If one wants to see some of the underlying documents in this case, you either have to go to Richmond, where the microfilm is, or you can order a copy from England by email and pay by credit card.  (This fascinates me; it is hard for me to yet believe that without getting out my chair I can a copy of a three-hundred-year-old document.)

Going back to Charles Kemper, he based most of his results on documents from the Public Record Office.  Some of these, and I have a copy of one, are in French.  Why French?  It was because Franz Michel and his partners in Switzerland knew French better than English.  So, they submitted their petition in the French language; these petitions asked for land in Virginia for a proposed colony of Switzers.  The history behind our Germanna Colonies is international.  There are few groups of Germans that have such a rich historical background.

Here is another secondary source, a reference in Wust's writing, which is close to the original:

• Gottlieb Kurz, " State Archives of Bern ", in a book " List of Swiss Emigrants in the Eighteenth Century ", edited by A. B. Faust and G. M. Brumbaugh, 1925.  Our colonists included people, either directly from Switzerland, or indirectly with a slight delay from Switzerland and Austria.  More international intrigue.

If you are in Bern, you can read about the desire of the city fathers to send "undesirables" to America in " Teutsch Missiven-Buch der Stadt Bern", No. 37, pp. 1023/4 (March 19, 1705) .  Of course, one man's undesirables are another man's nobles.
(23 Jul 01)