John Blankenbaker's Germanna History Notes

Note 1601

This note marks the start of another set of Fifty, and another set of a Hundred, and perhaps another set of Sixteen Hundred.  Don't hold your breath waiting for the end of the second Sixteen Hundred.  At two hundred and fifty a year, it would take six years plus.  They will continue if my health holds up, and if there is material to write about.  For finding material, I draw heavily on written sources.  Also, I am motivated by your questions.  Unfortunately, I often do not have the answers to many of your questions.

I notice that many readers emphasize the GERMAN in Germanna.  Yes, things German are a part of this list but it is intended to be more responsive to the subject of a small number of Germans who lived on the east side of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia in the Eighteenth Century.  Though many of the questions put to the list focus on people outside this area, I, for one, do not feel that we are losing a resource by this sharing.

I am reminded that many of our people lived outside of Virginia, before and after the time of major interest to us.  Andreas Gaar lived briefly in Pennsylvania before deciding to move to Virginia.  On the surface, this seems like a strange move, and makes our study of history all the more interesting.  Another person who did the same is Theobald Christler.  In fact, unless your person of interest is known to have landed in Virginia (and only a minority of them did), then the most likely places where they entered the colonies are Philadelphia and Baltimore, if they didn't come through the Carolinas or Georgia.

There is so much to be learned.  People are digging in the archives and libraries and other depositories.  That includes here and abroad.  Andreas Mielke found a letter in Berlin which has a history of the Second Colony.  Others are digging in the Virginia archives, the Pennsylvania archives, and in the North Carolina depositories, to find more information to flesh out our knowledge.  Then there is the task of organizing the material so that it makes sense.  Isolated pieces often mean nothing, but a collection of items may have a meaning far beyond the apparent individual meanings.  The challenge is before us.

We can look on a lot that has been accomplished, but we have more to do:

This is a pathway for communication.  The use we make of it is for us to determine.  Are you at least communicating?
(22 Feb 03)

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.