We have talked some about books for which the standard of scholarship was not too high. Some books were written as fiction, but a few readers have taken them as factual. After a couple of quotations, the fictional basis is lost and the books become history.
I start now on another book which was a serious work by an Instructor in History at the University of Pennsylvania. Leonidas Dodson wrote a biography of Alexander Spotswood in 1932, which I believe is considered the best biography of Spotswood that has been written. It is a book to be read if you are interested in how Virginia was run in the early eighteenth century.
I have just consulted the index to see what references were made to Graffenried. There are none, but stupid me, I should have looked under de Graffenried. The first in-depth discussion of Graffenried notes that he, with other promoters, proposed to establish a colony of Swiss upon the southwest branch of the Potomac. The merchants Perry and Hyde assured the Board of Trade that this would strengthen Virginia's frontiers and increase her trade, and the board recommended the proposal be accepted.
The proposal was approved by Queen Anne, and Graffenried went, in 1710, to America with Swiss and German settlers, mostly the latter, and with Queen Anne's letter telling the governor to allot the colony land. However, the settlement project in Virginia was deferred while Graffenried went to North Carolina with the Germans and the Swiss. After his terrible experience there with the Tuscarora Indians, Graffenried directed his attention again to Virginia. The proprietors of Maryland, the Northern Neck, and Pennsylvania all took an active interest in what he was proposing, since they felt he might be on their land. His principal interest was silver, and he found that if he settled on the lands of the crown, the royal share was not defined. The crown could take all that he found if they chose to.
This activity had so inflamed the imagination of Spotswood that he directed a campaign to get the share defined. Perhaps his interest was increased by the fact that he had invested in land, in 1713, which was thought to contain silver. He worked through Col. Blakiston, the agent for Virginia in London, to define the royal share. The two managed to get Orkney on their side, and testimony was taken by the Board of Trade, which generally was in favor of it. Apparently the matter was never settled. Meanwhile, recruiting was continuing in Germany for miners to develop the silver mines.
Eventually, the miners did come to Virginia. But this whole process is filled with much documented history that has yet to be fully uncovered.
(18 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.