R. T. Green, in his 1900 book which was just a few years after Willis Kemper's first book, cites Kemper as follows,
"Several years prior to 1714 Gov. Spotswood discovered deposits of iron ore on the large tracts he had entered where Germanna was afterwards located."
Perhaps Green accepted Kemper's statement in good faith, though a historian should have checked the records himself. Had Green checked, he would found that Spotswood did not have large tracts of land before 1714. Nor did Spotswood find any iron ore. When Spotswood did eventually patent land with iron ore on it, the year was 1720 (NS). His first land patent was in 1716, and this was for the Germanna tract, but it had no iron ore on it.
Green also cites Kemper as,
"They went to mining [in 1714] for the governor and built the blast furnace the remains of which are to be seen in the neighborhood."
Spotswood wrote to London in 1716 and said the Germans had done no work for him up to then. The Germans themselves said in the courthouse record previously cited that they started mining and quarrying in March of 1716. There never was a blast furnace on the Germanna site. It is not clear that the blast furnace on the mine site thirteen miles away from Germanna was built by the Germans.
Another very early book, " History of the Hebron Lutheran Church, Madison County, Virginia 1907 ", was written by the pastor, W. P. Huddle. He made a few minor errors. He thought the Second Colony lived on the south side of the Rapidan River, which is wrong. Huddle also mentions the Third Colony of forty families, which is the result of the error or exaggeration by Zollicoffer in Frankfurt. Also, Huddle thought that the Second Colony participated in the First Colony fund raising in 1719 and 1720 when the language of the original petition suggests otherwise. Huddle said that the Second Colony people were employed in the Spotswood's iron mines. The language of Spotswood, Jones, and Fontaine, and the evidence of their location some 15 to 20 miles away from the mines suggest overwhelmingly that this was not so.
In the year 1907, another book of history appeared, William W. Scott's " A History of Orange County, Virginia ". He, too, cites Kemper without checking the facts, and repeats many of Kemper's errors. In particular he cites the statement,
"These colonists were induced to leave their home in Germany by the Baron de Graffenried, acting for Governor Spotswood who was then making preparations to develop his iron mines in the vicinity of Germanna, and this business enterprise of the Governor was the sole cause of their coming to America and Virginia."
I think I have answered these points before.
The point that we see is that semi-professional historians have been copying the fiction of Kemper. Their published works are accepted by the readers as truthful because the authors are historians, are they not? Green and Scott are quoted by many others who followed them, and so fiction becomes history.
(08 Aug 04)
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.