John Blankenbaker's Germanna History Notes

Note 2001

It has become my custom on the Half Century marks to write about the plan for the Notes themselves.  Not only is this note a Half Century note, it is the start of the Third Millennium, which is something that I can hardly believe.  At the start of the Second Millennium, I debated about terminating the Notes then, but in the end I said that I would continue for a while longer.  Somehow I managed to put out another thousand.  Don't expect another thousand; my age alone would say that is very improbable.

I regard the history of our Germanna Colonists as very interesting.  The background is rich, their troubles are fairly well known, and their accomplishments are a part of our heritage.  Fortunately, a lot is known about the majority of the families and more will be learned in the course of time.  As an example of where more might be learned, the Parish Records of Illenschwang should be studied.  According to the contemporary notes pertaining to the departure of Andreas Gaar, he was in a party of three hundred.  Can we identify the other 293 individuals?

Many of the Germanna individuals came from Pennsylvania.  As to their motivations, we are inclined to say they were seeking land.  We recently had some more insight into that process in the diary of William Byrd where he is attempting to recruit people from Pennsylvania.  There is a lot to be learned in the general history.

We need to do more in the German Parishes.  Someday, maybe we can do more work in the Civil Records.  It would be great to have more local records of the German villages published, such as has been done for Trupbach.  The work that has been done there has really made that village a target of our admiration and is much appreciated.

It is my hope that I live long enough to see Fort Germanna reconstructed, at least in part.  This will be a time consuming and expensive undertaking and probably cannot be completed in full detail as it conflicts with the home of Alexander Spotswood.

I believe enough is known that we can identify some of the home sites of the Second Colony members but again it will take money and time.

Many of you are concentrating on the written records.  It would be great to have a complete file of the county records including the land plots and the later records of land sales.

We need more Cathi Clore Frosts and Betty Johnsons.
(14 Oct 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.