A recent discussion involved who was to be included in the Second Colony. Gary Zimmerman and Johni Cerny in their " Before Germanna " monographs included many people whom most other writers do not include. As a consequence they would make the Second Colony much larger than even contemporary writers did.
The first point, though, that should be brought out is a definition of what it takes to be a member of the Second Colony. Does leaving Germany in 1717 qualify? Or should the definition be more strictly confined to those who arrived in Virginia in 1717? Though they did not say what they considered the qualification to be, most people, in the absence of a definition, would say that "arrival" was the key word. We now know that some families left in 1717, but did not arrive in 1717 (or 1718). The basic fact that Zimmerman and Cerny used was that the family disappeared from the German Church Records by the summer of 1717.
Some of these individuals were stranded in London temporarily. I also believe that some of them may have paused en route to London for a year or two. Let me give the arguments for this in the case of the Willheit family.
When Tobias Wilhoid and John Wilhoid appeared on 19 April 1745 at the court in Williamsburg to be naturalized, they said that they were natives of the "Electorate of Mentz in Germany". Normally, one is a native of where he was born. There has never been a satisfactory explanation of why these two men would have claimed to be natives (citizens) of a place other than Schwaigern, where the church records seem to have their Baptismal Records.
First, Mentz is probably Mainz, a city on the Rhine River across from Wiesbaden, and down the river from where the Willheits would have started their trip. It was not unusual for a family who was emigrating to stop temporarily at an intermediate point. There could be many reasons but I would bet that Anna Maria Hengsteler Willheit was pregnant and not feeling up to continuing the trip. So I offer that the Johannes Willheit who was born in 1713 had died and another son, also named Johannes, was born in Mainz and thereby became a citizen of Mainz.
Why would Tobias Willheit say he was a citizen of "Mentz"? The Court Records in Virginia have examples where the clerk misunderstood the Germans and wrote what he thought he heard. In particular he might have thought that two men with the same last name would have been born in the same place. So I attach no significance to the inclusion of Tobias as a native of "Mentz" or Mainz. But I do feel that it is significant that the place was not Schwaigern. The men had nothing to hide from the English authorities.
(30 Nov 05)
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