After the Freudenberg emigrants left in 1738, their history became very confused. According to the minister in Freudenberg, they were going to Georgia. Some people amplified on this theme and gave some particulars, namely that on May 8 they put out to sea from Southhampton and reached Savannah in Georgia in 134 days. This is 19 weeks and in that sense the story is correct since it was a long voyage.
The point of difficulty that most writers have about this group is that it is very hard to find any records for the people in America. They became the lost tribes . B. C. Holtzclaw recognized that five of the parties did come to Virginia. (Actually it was six.) Holtzclaw surmised that the rest of the people, after a short stay in Georgia, went to Pennsylvania. He said though that no trace of any of the people could be found in Georgia.
The point of difficulty in the stories is that the Freudenberg group attempted to go to Virginia on the ship Oliver. About two of every three people on the Oliver lost their lives. The story went something like this. In Rotterdam there was a ship going to Virginia which was willing to take more people. It had been chartered for a group of Swiss people who were to settle on lands of William Byrd. Though the Oliver was not a large ship, the owners felt they could take more people, and, so, about 50 people from Freudenberg signed on.
That the ship was dangerously overloaded is told by the Captain who turned around after a few days at sea and returned to Rotterdam where he told the owners the ship was overloaded. Since they did not want to take any people off, the Captain resigned and the owners found a new Captain. The Oliver made very slow progress across the ocean. It left Rotterdam at the end of June, and it was not until after January 1 that Virginia was sighted. The passengers were slightly crazed from the lack of food and water, and, at gunpoint, they demanded the Captain take a party ashore in the longboat to search for food while the ship was anchored offshore. Already a significant number of people had died during the crossing. While the group was ashore, a storm came up and the Captain could not get back to the ship. Meanwhile, the Oliver dragged its anchor and came onto a sand bar where leaks developed in the hull. The ship capsized and a number of passengers could not escape. All together, between the losses on the high seas and the ship wreck in sight of Virginia, about two of every three people died. The heads of families from Freudenberg who survived are Hermann Bach, Johann Friedrich Müller, Hermann Müller, Georg Weidmann, and Johannes Hofmann, plus another one that Holtzclaw did not recognize, Hymenäus Creutz. The latter generally became Herman Critz, and lived, later, in the southwest of Virginia along with Frederick Miller.
(18 Oct 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.