Let's take a look a paragraph from the History page of the Germanna Foundation web site which reads:
"When Baron de Graffenried returned to Europe, Lt. Governor Alexander Spotswood requested him [Graffenried] to recruit for him [Spotswood] some German miners. Graffenried persuaded 14 individuals, with families totaling 42 persons, from the town of Siegen and Muesen, in the principality of Nassau-Siegen, Germany, to come to Virginia. The First Germanna Colony arrived in Virginia at Tappahannock, in the spring of 1714, and then came up the Rappahannock River, where they settled 20 miles west of Fredericksburg, at a location that would be called Fort Germanna."
In recent notes, we looked at the timing of some events. We know from Graffenried's own writings that he found the Germans in London when he arrived there. We also know from his own words that his advice to them was to return to Germany.
The quoted statement is fallacious, because there was no opportunity to recruit the miners. How was Graffenried able to recruit them when he was still in America or on board ship? Can fourteen individuals, with families, be persuaded to leave their homes on short notice? It sometimes took more than half a year to merely send a letter across the Atlantic ocean. Even if Graffenried had started the recruitment process ahead of his leaving for Europe, how many exchanges of letters could there have been? Could anyone have been persuaded to leave their homes in Germany by a couple of letters?
Notice that the quoted statement goes against Graffenried's initial advice to the Germans. He wrote that he recommended they go back to Germany. Does this sound as Graffenried was acting as a recruiter?
The timing of the events in which Graffenried was involved, and his own words, refute the quoted paragraph.
At the same time, there are written records which show that the recruitment of the Germans commenced much earlier, even before Alexander Spotswood had met Christoph von Graffenried (to use the native German form of his name). These same records show that the proposed employer of the Germans was not to be Spotswood, but was to be another agency. And the records also show that their employment was not to be directed at the extraction of iron ore, but at the development of silver mines.
(07 Jan 02)
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.