People who left Germany without permission jeopardized their possible inheritances. We have a recorded case in the person of Melchoir Brumbach, who had "wandered off to the island of Carolina". Melchoir had been fined 68 Reichsthaler for his action (presumably he left without permission), and it was to be paid from his inheritance. His brother Caspar appealed this decision, probably on behalf of Melchoir. Melchoir Brumbach was one of the original settlers at Fort Germanna.
We heard recently of Lewis Fisher, who wrote in his will that if his estate were recovered in Germany it was to be divided among his children. Perhaps this estate, whatever it was, was in jeopardy because he had failed to obtain permission to leave. I believe in some cases the estates were simply confiscated if one had left without permission. I do not know if the penalty or assessment extended to members of the family or not (they do today in the form of IRS assessment on survivors; as the nearest kin, one is responsible for the tax debts of another).
People who wanted to emigrate had to find their way to a seaport. In the case of those living near the Rhine River, the decision of the route to take was simple. It was the Rhine. It was not a free trip, even if a person could build his own raft to drift along with the current. From southwest Germany to the mouth of the Rhine at Rotterdam, there were dozens of principalities. Each of these could establish a custom house and demand custom payments. Many Germans were broke by the time they arrived at Rotterdam. A few people, fed up with the loss of money, simply got off the boat or raft and walked overland. This too had its problems, as there were still border crossings.
The emigrants from Siegen probably used the Sieg River, which flows into the Rhine. At Siegen, the Sieg River is not large (it starts only a few tens of miles from Siegen), so there may have been navigation problems on it.
At the time of the first and second Germanna Colonies, the trans-Atlantic crossing had not developed into a science. An emigrant usually had to find his way to England, often to London. Once in London, a ship had to be found which was crossing the Atlantic. Later, the ships started going to Rotterdam at the start of the "shipping season" to look for passengers.
As this phase developed, there were two classes of ships. One class consisted of those ships which were definitely in the business of transporting passengers across the Atlantic. The second class consisted of the opportunity seekers, namely those ships who would carry passengers if there were a large demand.
(14 Feb 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.