[Continuing the letter of Alexander Spotswood to Nathaniel Harrison.]
My next tract of 3065 acres which being contiguous, I thought of fitting to take up, the better to accommodate those people when I found them grow fond of having their settlements enlarged, it having been concerted that I should convey to them by way of lease for lives, because as aliens their possessions would not descend to their children: but they being seduced away by greater expectations elsewhere, left the land upon my hands; and so I was first engaged to purchase servants and slaves for seating plantations in the Colony. Soon afterward I was drawn into another land concern. In Feb. 1717 [this would 1718 by the modern calendar] Sir Richard Blackmore writes to Mr. Secretary Cock to engage me to favour a design, which he, with several considerable men at home, had to set up iron works in Virginia, and desires people might be imployed to find out the oar, and some thousands of acres taken up for that purpose. Accordingly I set my Germans to work to look for such oar, which search cost me upward of three score pounds: But about two years afterwards I received a letter from Sir Richard telling me he had at length considered that he was advanced in years, that his health was of late impaired, and that the undertaking was at too great a distance, and therefore he was determined to drop the project. Whereupon, rather than enter into a contention for my reimbursements, I chose to joyn in with several Gentlemen here, who were willing to carry on the project, and bear their proportion of the charges I had already been at; and so the mine tract, consisting of 15,000 acres of land, was in 1719 [by the modern calendar early 1720] taken up by nine or ten Adventures [speculators and partners]. About the same time [i.e., February of 1718(NS)] I fell into another partnership of land [etc.]. Mr. Robert Beverley having discovered some excellent land among ye little mountains, and made a survey thereof before the Proclamation issued in 1710, concerning the granting of land, but not daring to seat lands so remote from all Christian inhabitants, and exposed to Indians, found it in vain to take out a patent for the same under the new terms of cultivation; until an opportunity hapned of freeing a considerable number of Germans families imported in 1717 [which could have been up to March 25 of 1718 by the modern calendar], when he invited me to become a sharer in the land, and at the same time admitted in some other partners, to the end that we might all joyn our abilities to make a strong settlement with a body of people at once. Accordingly I came into the proposal, as judging it now ways unbecoming to me, in the station of Governor, to contribute towards the seating H.M. lands; and paying down the passage-money for 70 odd Germans, we settled them upon our tract as freemen (not servants) in 20 odd tenements, all close joying to one another for their better defence, providing them with a stock of cattle and all other things necessary for their support, without receiving (even to this day) one penny or penny's worth of rent from them. [to be continued]
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.