John Blankenbaker's Germanna History Notes

Note 2127

[With Col. Byrd on his own plantations, on 9 September 1732.]

"For this good turn, I ordered Mr. Samuel half a pistole [a Spanish coin], all which he laid out with a New England man and made my weaver and spinning woman, who has the happiness to be called his wife, exceedingly drunk.  To punish the varlet for all these pranks, I ordered him [?] to be banished from thence forthwith, under the penalty of being whipped home from constable to constable if he presumed to come again.

"I left my memorandums with Mr. Booker of everything I ordered to be done and mounted my horse about ten, and in little more reached Bermuda Hundred and crossed over to Colonel Carter's [John Carter, son of King Carter].  He, like an industrious person, was gone to oversee his overseers at North Wales, but his lady was at home and kept me till suppertime before we went to dinner.  As soon as I had done justice to my stomach, I made my honors to the good-humored little fairy and made the best of my way home, where I had the great satisfaction to find all that was dearest to me in good health, nor had any disaster happened in the family since I went away.  Some of my neighbors had worm fevers, with all the symptoms of the bloody flux, but blessed be God, their distempers gave way to proper remedies."

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This is the end of William Byrd's " Progress to the Mines ".  The portion that has been published by the Germanna Foundation was not reproduced here.  William Byrd wrote for himself and this was never published while he was living.  He is associated with the Germanna Colonies in at least this way.  He obtained from the Council a patent of 100,000 acres contingent on settling 100 families on it within three years time.  He had some difficulty in securing people to live on it.  Working with a Mr. Ochs of Swiss origins, they attempted to find the people in Switzerland.  In 1738, they had a large group of families ready to go to Virginia.  They chartered the ship "Oliver" at Rotterdam.  At this same time, about 50 people arrived from Freudenberg in Nassau-Siegen who wanted to go to Virginia.  They agreed to add these people to the passenger list though it appears there was no commitment by these Germans to settle on Byrd's land.  [Byrd's strategy may have been influenced by Alexander Spotswood, who subscribed to take a large number of Germans who arrived on one ship.]  The ship "Oliver" was overloaded and progress was slow.  Off the coast of Virginia, the ship sank with a great loss of life after a voyage of almost six months.  Only about one-third of the people survived that had embarked in Rotterdam.  Among the surviving people were Wayman, Millers, and Creutz among others (*see earlier Notes).

[*You can search John's earlier Notes posted to this website at our Search Page .  Just type in the surname you are looking for in the blank box and make sure that "John's Germanna Notes" appears in the first "Search" box.  Be sure you read the instructions for getting good search results.  As an example, you can type in "Creutz" and "Pico Search" will return 8 "hits" on John's Notes pages.  Searching at "Site Level" returns 10 "hits", for some reason.]
(14 Jun 05)