One way to discern who the first settlers were of the area which became Madison County is to study the original patents. The counties are mentioned in these patents but that information is misleading because the counties have different shapes today. Madison and Culpeper are not mentioned because they did not exist until later. It is better to use the waterways as a guide to where the patents are located. For the discussion here, the Robinson River and its tributaries are the best general guides. The largest single plotting of these patents was done by me and shown in Beyond Germanna in volume 10, number 6 issue. About 110 patents were shown for both English and German patentees.
To do this plotting, I read the original patents and later patents and grants to improve upon the layout. Because of the imperfect nature of the patent descriptions and locations, there is some uncertainty but the overall result is good. The patents range from along the Hughes River at the northern end of today’s Madison County to below the Michael Holt and Rucker patents in the south. These latter patents are almost at the southern edge of Madison County. In the east-west dimension, the range is slightly less.
Whether a name was German or English is fairly easy to tell because we know the origins of many of the Germans and we know something about how the German names change into English. We understand that Carpenter, Smith, and Cook are the names of Germans. We can classify the names with only a small error. There are a few names for which there is evidence that the person was German but we lack the details. Rucker is a good German name. Ballenger seems to behave as a German. Bloodworth could go either way but on balance they seem to be German.
Among the first settlers whose patents issued in 1726 there are these twenty-two names: Clore, Snider, Crigler, Cook, Fleshman, Scheible, Yager, Carpenter, Thomas, Blankenbaker (three times for three different men), Smith (twice for two different names), Barlow, Utz, Motz, Harnsberger, Moyer, Kaefer, Broyles, and Holt. In these 1726 patents there were two English names: Rush and Rush.
The Germans moved as a group. They wanted to establish a German community. Their duties as servants were finished at the same time. So they sought land as a group with each member taking some land that he wanted. Their numbers provided security though it did not entirely eliminate the danger. The Germans said that they had to come this far to find land that was not taken up by the speculators such as Spotswood, Beverley, Carter, and Fry.
Though the Germans were in an exposed position when they moved to the Robinson River Valley, they had been living in an exposed position for seven years. In their first homes along the Rapidan River, they were the western-most point of "English" civilization. So it was nothing new when they moved to the RRV where they continued to be the most-western point of "English" civilization, even though the language spoken in their neighborhood was German.
(01 Mar 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.