To encourage Craig Kilby with those books he is going to write, here is a little more on Larken Chew. At one time, it appears that Chew and Spotswood were friendly. This would be about 1712 and 1713.
When Christoph Graffenried came up to Virginia from North Carolina in 1712, he had in mind doing two things. First he wanted to find the silver mines that Franz Michel said he had found. Second, Graffenried wanted to find a location where he could relocate the remnants of his North Carolina colony. He explored roughly the same geographical area for both purposes. This started at the falls on the Potomac River just above present day Washington, DC, and went upstream from there.
Lt. Gov. Spotswood explained to Graffenried that this was not a safe place for a European to be. He sent out a militia guard under Capt. Larken Chew to protect Graffenried. It would be safe to presume that Graffenried and Chew talked about what Graffenried was doing. From his writings, it appears that Graffenried was not reticent about telling people that he thought there was silver in Virginia, or in Maryland, or in Pennsylvania. (No one was too sure where the state boundaries were, so the silver could have been in any on the three states.)
Then, the next April, Larken Chew was selling fractional interests in about a six-square-mile piece of land. The deeds are recorded in the Essex County books. Spotswood bought a one-quarter interest in this property for 45 Pounds. Graffenried bought a one-sixteenth interest in this same property. Other people bought fractional shares, and Chew was left as the owner of a fractional share himself.
This mine was about four to five miles from the future Fort Germanna. This was the mine that Spotswood was so excited about in writing to Col. Blakiston, so excited that Blakiston undertook to send forty odd Germans on to Virginia to work in these mines.
Graffenried, in his writings, makes it clear that he and Spotswood had a common interest in a silver mine. It could only refer to this particular mine.
This is the mine from which John Fontaine took minerals and attempted to assay them during the trip across the Blue Ridge Mountain. Fontaine was very negative about the prospects of recovering any silver. In fact, this was the beginning of the end of the silver mine, and the end of Spotswood's 45 Pounds of money which he had paid to Larken Chew.
What we do not know is what was Chew's role in this transaction. Did Chew patent a piece of ground and start selling shares? At first, he had to do a little marketing, but Graffenried's appearance may have helped tremendously. Perhaps Graffenried got his own small share in return for his promotion of the silver mine. Or was Chew merely the 'straw man' to disguise the real owners? Spotswood never liked to issue land as Governor directly to himself as a private party. It didn't look right.
(22 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.