The headright names in patents are a research tool, though perhaps the quality of the data is not the best. One can do a lot with these names. Using Nell Marion Nugent's " Cavaliers and Pioneers ", Volume 3 for the years 1695 to 1732, I counted the male importations of the surname Thomas. There were 36 occurrences of the name in this 37 year period. The years of actual importation would have been slightly before this.
Did 36 male Thomases come during this time? Because of the duplication or multiple use of any given name, there might have been fewer who actually came. Because not everyone got a headright or used it, this would say there might have been more.
I did judge that all of these Thomases were citizens of Great Britain to judge by the surrounding names. What percentage of these Thomases actually filed for Land Patents? Only 13 Thomases with 8 different given names applied for Land Patents. It appears that only a fraction of the English Thomases actually applied for land.
On the other hand, we know that nearly all of the Germanna citizens applied for land. There were some exceptions, such as the minister, the young, and old, who did not. We see that the Germans were more motivated to obtain land than the English were. The Germans did not come looking for a job. They wanted land.
In the period of time when the 36 male Thomases came, I counted 13 female Thomas importees who claimed headrights. Sex (or color) had no bearing whether a headright could be obtained. An almost three-to-one ratio of men to women (again, all are English) in the headright lists suggests that actually many more men came than women. Finding a wife was probably a problem. When we compare the sex ratio for the Germans as compared to the English, we see that it was nearly equal for the Germans instead of being so male biased for the English. The reason that it was equal for the Germans is that they tended to come as families. For the English, there must have been a lot of single people, especially men.
One would expect that the marriage of German women and English men would be more common than the marriage of German men and English women. I have no statistics on this. (The other reason given for English men to marry German women was their willingness to work in the fields.)
The full and complete study of headright names could be a difficult and tedious task. But the numbers here suggest that it might be a fruitful field.
(01 May 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.