What animals did the Germanna Colonists have in the beginning in Virginia? It appears that Lt. Gov. Alexander Spotswood furnished the colonists with cattle. We know that the First Colony seemed to have beef because John Fontaine states in his history of the trip to Germanna that Rev. Haeger gave the visitors some beef to eat. The term of Spotswood’s ventures seems to be that he placed cattle with people who leased land from him. The terms were that the increases in the cattle were divided between Spotswood and the people who cared for the animals. By this means the Germans could have earned the right to keep half of the increase. (I have sometimes wondered if this might have been part of the basis for the lawsuits brought by Spotswood against members of the Second Colony. Perhaps some of them could not return even the number of cows that Spotswood had placed with them.)
In Germany, the ratio of cows to horses was high. That is, there were many more cows than horses. On the farm, the cow was not only a producer of milk, but was a draft animal. In Beyond Germanna , there was a tax list for Trupbach in the year 1566 (vol. 13, n.1, p. 726; see the web page www.germanna.com also). Among the seventeen living units, there are six horses and one colt. The number of cows, heifers, and beeves were ninety-nine. In the book Ortsgeschichte Trupbach ( History of Trupbach ), pictures show that in the middle of the last century (the 1900's) that cattle were still a primary source of power for farming.
We have another input into the source of the power for farming in the Germanna communities. The 1787 Personal Property Tax List for Culpeper County gives some examples:
Harmon Fishback, 3 horses and 6 cows
Zachariah Fleshman, 3 horses and 7 cows
Peter Fleshman, 1 horse and 1 cow
Adam Delph, 2 horses and 2 cows
Andrew Deer, 2 horses and 6 cows
Peter Clore, 3 horses and 10 cows
Joseph Utterback, 1 horse and 4 cows
Most of the horses above were probably for riding and not for draft work. Today in the Pennsylvania “Dutch” country, the Amish use mules for field work and lighter horses for pulling the buggies. An item in the 1787 Tax List was “carriage wheels”. One has to look hard in the tax list for mentions of carriages or similar items. Mordecai Barbour had a four-wheeled stage wagon, Laurence Slaughter has a phaeton, Rev. James Stevensons had a post chaise, and these were men on the upper end of the economical and social scene. I had to look over several pages to find these examples. I would conclude that wheeled vehicles were rare. Perhaps the two-wheel farm wagons were not taxed, but these were probably not numerous. Getting to church was not easy.
(19 May 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.