Maybe I can amplify on some of the recent remarks on Alexander Spotswood. He seldom wrote to Lord Orkney (formerly George Hamilton), since Orkney seldom answered. It was to be likened to writing to a black hole. Nothing came out. Instead, Spotswood wrote to Col. Nathaniel Blakiston, who was the agent for Virginia in London. Blakiston went scurrying around to visit many people including Orkney. I have seen one document written by Orkney and that was to the King. In it, he explained he was laid up and could not move about. The letter to the king asked that the Lt. Gov. of Virginia (who was then Drysdale) to be allowed to return to England for reasons of health. Orkney never called Drysdale by name and the Colonial Records Project filed the letter as referring to Spotswood but is not consistent with that interpretation.
Very early in Spotswood's appointment as Lt. Gov., he had an Act passed giving a monopoly of the Indian trade to a private company. He invested in this company. As with many of his endeavors, this was a mixture of public motives (quite good) and private motives. In England, the traders and merchants testified against the legislation citing its monopolistic character. They won out, the law was overturned, and that was the end of the monopoly for trading with the Indians. This was Spotswood's first attempt to secure his future financially.
Spotswood's second attempt to secure his place financially was silver mining when he invested in 1713 in a projected silver mine. It was for this reason that Col. Blakiston committed Spotswood to paying the 150 pounds on the passage money of forty odd Germans. He had been working with Spotswood in obtaining a clarification of the division of spoils with the Crown. The percentage that the crown would get of silver and gold mines was not stated and by implication they could get all. Spotswood urged Blakiston to pursue the question. Testimony was taken in London, but Queen Anne died before a decision was reached. It took a while for King George to settle in on the English throne, and by then the silver mine was proven to be a bust. So this was strike two against Spotswood.
The third effort of Spotswood was in land. He observed that this was a proven route used by many people in Virginia. He started very modestly with the Germanna tract (after the failure of the silver mine tract) and added to it. He saw that it would take many acres to succeed on the scale he desired. He also saw that the land would lie to the west of Fort Germanna,, since no big tracts were available to the east of Fort Germanna. The major purpose of the trip to and over the Blue Ridge was to explore possible land. With Robert Beverly and others he formed a partnership, staked out 40,000 acres (actually closer to 65,000 acres), and sought Germans to occupy it. Capt. Tarbett delivered a shipload of them. It was still years before he filed for a patent on this and still more years before he obtained a title to it. He fought hard on this question, which was the major point in his economic self sufficiency program.
(20 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.