John Blankenbaker's Germanna History Notes
Note 1451
This is the start of another "half-century" in these notes and that means it is review time. I thought I might try to define a "Germanna citizen" but I know I am doomed to failure in the sense there are too many definitions floating around and I don't wish to exclude anyone.
The ULTRA-CONSERVATION view is that a Germanna citizen lived in Fort Germanna. This would restrict the number to about forty-two people. Except for one unknown origin, all of these people left the immediate vicinity of Siegen in 1713. The one possible exception is Johann Justus Albrecht whose origin is unknown.
The CONSERVATIVE view is that we should add the eighty or so people who lived just outside the walls of the fort. They were a little more than just outside the walls as they lived across the Rapidan River, from two to eight miles upstream (to the west) from the fort. They probably went to church at the fort while Pastor Haeger was still present. They certainly went to Court at Germanna, after the fort was torn down, when the site became the county seat of the new Spotsylvania County.
This latter group had friends and relatives who started appearing within a few years of the second group's initial appearance. Actually, it a little hard to distinguish these sets of people as we not entirely positive who was in the first wave of the second group. Though the Germans and Spotswood roughly agreed that the first wave of the second group numbered about eighty, we have one hundred and twenty candidates for these eighty slots. So the more LIBERAL members of the CONSERVATIVE group allow all who lived within hailing distance of Fort Germanna.
About twenty years after the first group was at the fort, friends and relatives of theirs started coming. These people were never at the fort and, in fact, never saw the fort. But, if they came from the same region and had some of the same ancestors as those whom we do call Germanna citizens, shouldn't we call them Germanna citizens also? At least that is the more LIBERAL view. So the criteria shifts from a presence at Fort Germanna to the
background
of the people.
Many of the Germans in the community with the Germanna citizens and their friends and relatives (more likely the latter, than the former), had little in common with the Germanna citizens except they were living in the same region. Eventually, the very LIBERAL view is that anyone of German heritage who lived on the east side of the Blue Ridge Mountains was a Germanna person.
Ultimately, in the extreme, one asks, "Does it really matter?" No, it does not. The subject matters for discussion are the Germans who lived, for at least a while, on the east side of the Blue Ridge; however, anyone is welcome to the discussion, and, to the extent the subject matter is not diluted too much, all topics are valid. There are many related topics which have a bearing on the subject matter. In the last notes, I was discussing the followers of Waldo. They can be tied in to the reasons there were Germans east of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
(20 Aug 02)