A recent discussion with a correspondent had led me to examine some documents on the Internet. I was surprised at the dishonesty which I found there and I will take a note or two to expand on this. The general subject was the emigration from Freudenberg in 1738. We know something about the group who left Freudenberg then because the pastor of the church there left a note in the Death Register. This names about fifty odd people. For an English translation of this work, I recommend Don Yoder’s translation of Otto Baeumer’s work which appears in " Rhineland Emigrants - Lists of German Settlers in Colonial America ". No claim is made by Yoder that the fifty odd people who are named arrived in America, or as to where they landed. This list merely says who left. (Otto Baeumer’s original article was in German, but if anyone wishes to verify the names they can consult the Freudenberg Death Register.)
One web page is to be found by inserting "progealogists" (without the quotation marks) between the usual www. and .com. This leads to additional pages by using the ‘search’ function for ‘savannah’ and then checking the results for ‘Nassau-Siegen’. This results in a listing of the fifty odd names which the pastor in Freudenberg had entered in the Death Register. Thus, the Emigration list is being used as an Immigration list! [Emigrate=To LEAVE one country or region to settle in another. Immigrate=To ENTER and settle in a country or region to which one is not native. NOTE: From The American Heritage Dictionary, Emigrate describes the move relative to the point of departure, whereas Immigrate describes the move relative to the destination.]
The list of names of the assumed arriving passengers is exactly the same as the list of names of the departing passengers. In other words, there is actually no passenger list of arriving ( immigrating ) passengers; it was fabricated from the list of known emigrating people in the Death Register. These arriving passengers are assigned to the ship Two Brothers because that is the only known ship to have arrived at Savannah in the year 1738. [Again, people are playing with data and making it appear to be "real", without any disclaimers or notes to the opposite.]
What is even worst is that there is no valid evidence that the Freudenberg people were passengers on the Two Brothers. In fact, there is good evidence that they were not . But even if they were on the Two Brothers, what are the chances that the person making the arriving list of passengers would write down the same fifty-odd names in exactly the same order as the pastor at Freudenberg wrote down the same names when the group left Freudenberg? This would not allow for deaths or births, which is unlikely itself. But the odds against getting the names in exactly the same order are infinitely small. So, the claim that the arriving passengers have the very names that the pastor wrote down is false, and to report it as such is dishonesty.
This duplication of the names is the first tip off that the list of arriving passengers is false and erroneous. In the next note I will look at the evidence that the Freudenberg people did leave for Georgia or Savannah.
(16 Jan 06)
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.