[Pardon me if I repeat material in some recent notes.] A few years ago, someone sent me a photograph of a Madison County High School graduating class in the 1930s. As I looked at the names of the people, I could say that I was related to more than one-half of the people in the class even though I did not know any of the individuals. My own connection to Madison County is that I am descended from a dozen of the Germanna families who were the earliest settlers of Madison County. In fact, my grandfather Blankenbeker could be said to be pure German since he was descended only from these German immigrants.
If I am related to more than half of a class of the 1930s, and some of the names were unknowns for whom I could not make any decision, then it would be a tentative conclusion that the Germans had a powerful influence in Madison County. Even two hundred years after the first settlement, the German influence was strong.
Who were the first settlers in Madison County? We must note that Madison County did not come into existence until 1792. Prior to that it was in Culpeper County, Orange County, and Spotsylvania County and its ancestors. In trying to answer the question just posed, we must also note there is a difference between settlers and speculators. Settlers lived on the land, while the speculators were hoping for a quick sale, or lease of the land, or use of the land as quarters where slaves tended the land. The speculators did not intend to live there. Very often the speculators were able to obtain large tracts which are clues to the intended use since these tracts were too large to cultivate by one family. For example, Joshua Fry appears to have had a large tract in eastern Madison County in 1726. The first Fry did not live on the land until 1754 though. Before then, the land was undeveloped as is shown by the need for him to re-patent the land on two later occasions.
Who owned the land originally? Between the Rappahannock River and the Rapidan River, which is where the future Madison County lies, the land was considered initially to be the property of the Crown. There were procedures whereby people could obtain this land from the Crown and the culminating event was a patent, a legal document which conveyed title to the patentee. These original patents have been preserved. Nell Marion Nugent started preparing abstracts of all of these patents and the Virginia Genealogical Society continued the work of publishing these abstracts in book form. Copies of the original patents are at the Virginia State Library and they are available on-line. The land between the rivers was a part of Spotsylvania County after it was formed in 1721. As a part of the founding legislation, land in this area was to be free with no quit rents for ten years. This made it very attractive to both Germans and English.
(28 Feb 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.