Rupp also quoted Col. (William) Byrd, who wrote " A Progress to the Mines ", but Rupp took his material from " Howe's Historical Collection ", which quoted what Col. Byrd had written:
"This famous town consists of Col. Spotswood's enchanted castle on one side of the street, and a baker's dozen of ruinous tenements on the other, where so many German families had dwelt some years ago, but have now moved ten miles higher up, in the forks of the Rappahannock, to land of their own."
Again, as in the last note, there seems to be some confusion about the two Germanna colonies and perhaps Byrd did not understand the distinction. His comments have puzzled some writers because the description of Byrd does not agree with Fontaine's description, which said there were nine houses. Byrd says thirteen (a "bakers dozen"). Some people concluded that the thirteen houses were for the Second Colony, but we know that the Second Colony members were at another location, on the opposite side of the Rapidan River, and slightly upstream from Fort Germanna. There seems to be good evidence that Spotswood built his home on the site of Fort Germanna, so it would seem that the tenements on the other side of the street did refer to the homes of the First Colony Germans.
First, there is a sixteen-year difference between the visit of Fontaine (in 1715), in which he put the number of homes at nine, and the visit of Byrd (in 1732), in which he put the number at thirteen. There is no reason to believe that the number of homes remained at nine. We know that Spotswood's second cousin, Francis Hume, was installed as supervisor of the Germans. He probably rated a house. The First Colony did have a number of bachelors. Some of them may have married and built homes. I see no great difficulty in having the nine houses described by Fontaine grow to thirteen houses in a few more years.
The Germans at Fort Germanna moved something more like twenty miles than the ten miles that Byrd said. Where Byrd was really in error was not in the miles, but in specifying that the location was the Fork of the Rappahannock, which was not correct for the First Colony. It was the Second Colony that was in the Fork.
From Jones' comments in the previous note and Byrd's comments here, we might conclude that most commentators of that day did not understand clearly that there were Germans who came at different times, and who were following differing paths. The observers then just understand there were Germans. They heard different things about them, and tried to make a unified story. So, they have some of the Second Colony people doing the things that the First Colony was responsible, for and vice versa. After all, the concept of a First Colony and a Second Colony are modern inventions. To the English of the eighteenth century, there simply were Germans.
(28 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.