[With John W. Wayland]: Spotswood's Expedition to the Valley
“More than one hundred years elapsed, after the settlement at Jamestown, before a white man looked upon the Shenandoah Valley. . . . if any white man, either as a roaming hunter, or as a fettered captive, ever visited that part of the Virginia lying west of the Blue Ridge, previous to the year 1716, no record of that visit has been preserved; consequently, upon Alexander Spotswood, governor of Virginia from 1710 to 1722, is bestowed the credit of first exploring the Valley of Virginia.”
[Wayland is way off base here. Already, by 1708, there was a map of the Shenandoah Valley in London. This was drawn by Francis Michel, who spent a considerable time in the Shenandoah Valley and roamed over a major portion of it. Spotswood, at the most, spent two nights there and made no maps himself, or left any written report of the trip. There were others previous to Michel, but I cite him to show that Wayland was in error.]
“Having had their horses freshly shod at Germantown, ten miles below the falls of the Rappahannock, the company left that place on the 29th of August . . .”
[Wayland says "Germantown", by which he means the place we now call Germanna; but this is not an error, as Germanna was often called Germantown. Of course, Germanna is above the falls of the Rappahannock by about thirteen miles.]
“[On the trip over the Blue Ridge] a keen lookout had to be maintained both day and night; for hostile savages dogged the footsteps of the party almost from the time of starting, and several sharp fights occurred with these rude children of the forest, who looked with jealous eye upon the invaders of their wilderness kingdoms.”
[No editor today would allow language such as this, especially since the statements were false.]
[Wayland goes on to describe the actual path in great detail, but it is unknown, and even debated fiercely today. He describes their exploration of the Shenandoah Valley, saying they reached the Alleghanies on the far side of the Valley. In actuality, John Fontaine, who kept a record, says they spent two nights and little more than one day there.]
[What we learn is the historians have greatly distorted history. They have a lot of events to write about, so they take up one or two items and expand them beyond what the facts would warrant. Instead of reading what John Fontaine, who was on the trip, wrote, they read what other historians have written,
ad infinitum
. With each telling of the story, it becomes embellished. Wayland paints a very inaccurate picture of the trip across the mountains. After it gets published in a respectable journey, it becomes the truth. Our own Germanna history is also littered with the carcasses of false stories.]
(12 Oct 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.