[From John W. Wayland, “The Germans in the Valley”.]
“Let us get a bird’s eye view of the Valley of Virginia the home of the people we are studying. Along the northwest border of Virginia run the southeast ranges of the Allegheny Mountains, with numerous outlying spurs. Thirty miles within the State border, parallel in general with the Allegheny ranges, runs the single range of the Blue Ridge. The long, narrow belt of country thirty miles wide and ten times as long between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghenies, is the Valley of Virginia. The northeast half of it, from Staunton to Harper’s Ferry, is the Shenandoah Valley, and contains the counties of Augusta, Rockingham, Page, Shenandoah, Warren, Frederick, Clarke, Berkeley, and Jefferson (the last two now fall in the state of West Virginia). The southwest half, from Staunton to the border of North Carolina and Tennessee, is drained by the headwaters of four rivers, the James, Roanoke, Great Kanawha, and the Tennessee. Counties contained in this half are Rockbridge, Botetourt, Roanoke, Craig, Montgomery, Floyd, Pulaski, Carroll, Wythe, Grayson, Smyth, and Washington. The line between Augusta County and Rockbridge County, running at right angles across the Valley, is practically at the height of the land that divides the headwaters of the Shenandoah and the James.
“The whole Valley of Virginia was a part of Orange County until the year 1738. In that year, the country west of the Blue Ridge was removed from Orange County and transformed into the two counties of Frederick and Augusta. The southwest half of the Valley was settled by people of various nationalities, Germans, French Huguenots, etc., but chiefly by the Scotch-Irish. The northwest half the Shenandoah Valley also numbered Scotch-Irish and Huguenots among its pioneers, but it was settled chiefly by the Germans [the settlement pattern was strongly localized and the different nationalities were not evenly distributed].
“About one-third of the Shenandoah Valley is included within the limits of Augusta and Rockingham Counties. These are the largest two counties in the state, and each extends across the Valley. Northeast of Rockingham, two rows of counties extend to the Potomac River. The Massanutten Mountains and the Opequon River form the dividing line between these two rows. The Massanutten Mountains run in a line for about fifty miles, with two-thirds of the Valley on their west side and one-third on the east side. The Shenandoah River, with all of its branches, drains the Shenandoah Valley to the Potomac River. The main Shenandoah River flows into the Potomac at Harper’s Ferry. The north fork of the Shenandoah flows into the main, or south, fork of the river at Front Royal.
“If one crosses the Blue Ridge Range from Madison, one comes to the southern end of the Massanutten Range. Some of the closest contacts between the Germanna people and the Valley people occurred along the South Fork of the Shenandoah between the Massanutten and the Blue Ridge. Many of the land patents by the Germanna people were on the South Fork.”
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.