In discussing John Millbanks in the last Note, I would like to mention that his case was researched and written up by Ellie Caroland and published in Beyond Germanna (p. 123). Among the works she cited was the book, English Convicts in Colonial America: Middlesex, 1617-1775 . It was published by Plyanthos at New Orleans in 1974. Apparently, from the title, convicts were sent to America from the earliest days to the time of the Revolution.
I believe it was during the period when Alexander Spotswood was acting as Governor of Virginia (but perhaps slightly later) that the Virginia legislature passed a law forbidding convicts to be shipped to Virginia. This law was disallowed in England because the man who held the contract to actually ship the convicts said that if the law were passed he could not perform his contractual duties with the English government.
There were many differences between the general class of the immigrant from Great Britain and the immigrant from Germany. One can obtain data on this question by studying the names in the head rights used to obtain land. The book series, Cavaliers and Pioneers , is an excellent source for this information. (In the Northern Neck, head rights could not be used to obtain land.)
If the head right name is only a given name, then the person referred to was a slave. As to whether a person was Germanic or otherwise is decided by the general knowledge of the pattern of names. For example, if the name is Cook, it is indeterminate. In this case, look at the other names mentioned in the head rights for this patent. Generally it is to be expected that all of the head rights will be of the same nationality. For example, in Patent Book 14, on p. 362, we find that the Moore patent used the head rights, "Camper (x2), Huffman (x2), Richart (x3), and Cunk." It is not hard to decide that all of these were probably German names.
I did a study once of the surname Thomas which might be either English or German. But based on the adjacent names, my base of names was considered to be English in roughly the period of time from 1695 to 1732. There were 37 occurrences of the name Thomas as head rights. But only 13 Thomases patented land. Whether a name was used more than once as a head right is a valid point but the given names with the surnames would suggest that the great majority of the Thomases in the head right lists were unique and not duplicated. The numbers 13 and 37 show that most of the English did not obtain land by patent. On the other hand, we know from other sources that the majority of the Germans did obtain land, usually by patent.
(20 Dec 05)
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.