What most students of Germanna history do not realize is how early the history of Germanna began. Before Alexander Spotswood had left the Army, the events commenced which became the Germanna Community.
Back in Note 1 of this series, written 6 January 1997, two of the opening sentences read,
"The incident which was important to there being a locality called Germanna was the decision of Franz Louis Michel, a citizen of Bern, Switzerland, to go to America and investigate conditions there. He left Basel on 8 October 1701 and arrived in Yorktown, Virginia, on 9 May 1702."
Eventually, after several years, the activities of Michel were merged into George Ritter and Company, a stock company of Bern. Michel went to Holland, where he hired a "head miner", one Johann Justus Albrecht, to buy mining tools and hire miners to go to America to develop what Michel thought were silver mines in the Shenandoah Valley. These plans were delayed by the decision to engage George Ritter and Company, of which Christoph von Graffenried was now a major partner, in a colonization scheme in North Carolina. This last scheme went bankrupt, which left the activities of Albrecht hanging. Apparently, Albrecht, in disregard of Graffenried's instructions, brought the "miners" along to London, where they were stranded for a lack of funds to continue.
Eventually, these people became the nucleus of Germanna, where the first (private) purpose was to mine silver not far from the Rapidan River. After several years of delay, by which time the silver objective was abandoned, these Germans found iron ores. From the records available to us, the indications are they did not build the iron furnace. During this time, another group, the Second Colony, was imported by Lt. Gov. Alexander Spotswood to be the settlers on a large tract of western land.
Where some people have erred was in assuming that Germanna started in 1710 with Spotswood's arrival in Virginia, or in 1714 with the arrival of the Germans. The history of Germanna began earlier, more than a decade before the name Germanna had been coined by Spotswood.
I have told much of this early history in the first Notes, though I would modify now some of the statements I made then. But, essentially, the history is valid and is recommended for review and study. You can read these early Notes on this website, Note Nr. 1 .
[I will be off the air for a short period. When I return to these notes I will be impeded by a lack of reference material, but we will see what can be done.]
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.