Not long after the Germans "miners" were settled at Fort Germanna, Queen Anne died. This complicated the settlement of the royalty question. First, a decision had to be made as to whom the next sovereign would be. After King George was selected, he had to become acquainted with the job. For two years no decision was reached on the royalty question. Spotswood had suggested to Blakiston that he try the argument with King George that he would be helping his fellow countrymen if he made a favorable decision to share the minerals with the operators of the mine.
Spotswood, when the Germans had been with him for about two years, wrote that the Germans had done nothing to reimburse him for his expense. But just about this time, Spotswood seems to have decided that he would set the Germans to work on the silver mine. We know from a statement by Albrecht and Holtzclaw that the Germans worked at quarrying and mining from March of 1716 to December of 1718 (both new style dates).
Reading between the lines of John Fontaine's report on the crossing of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which started from Germanna, I would gather that the Germans had been working on the silver mine. Since this trip was in August and September of 1716, it would appear that the Germans had been working on the silver mine from March up to then. One of Fontaine's tasks during this trip was to evaluate whether the silver mine would yield anything. His writings are negative on the prospects.
Several years later, Spotswood wrote to Col. Harrison, the Deputy Auditor General, that he set his Germans to looking for iron at about the time the Second Colony came. This would have been late 1717 or early 1718 (by the modern calendar). From the fall of 1716 to the fall of 1717, it is not clear what the Germans were doing. I suspect that they had been exploring the countryside on their own, and probably had found good traces of iron. So when Spotswood said he set his Germans to searching for iron starting about the beginning of 1718, it was probably the case they had been working in this area for perhaps a year, but perhaps informally. This was not full time work as the Germans had to take time to farm.
Also, there was no furnace built up to December 1718, as Spotswood said that he had spent upwards of sixty pounds sterling on the project. The budget for furnaces usually ran into thousands of pounds of money.
In the opening lines I put the word miner into quotation marks. At one time Spotswood wrote that the Germans "could generally be called miners." I have wondered what the effect of the word "generally" is here. I am of the opinion that it weakens the statement. I would be interested in what you think it would mean.
(07 Oct 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.