E. W. Wallace, a frequent contributor to this list, sent me a snippet of history which is pertinent to the recent discussions. One of her ancestors, Joh. Leon’d Holsteiner, came on the ship James Goodwill which arrived at Philadelphia on 11 September 1728. This cleared the English port Deal on the 15th of June in 1728. Whereas I used the figure of ten weeks as the average for the time it took to cross the Atlantic, in this case it took almost thirteen weeks from England to Philadelphia. For the total time of his trip we would need to add the time from his home to Rotterdam plus the time it took to go from Rotterdam to Deal. Therefore, we could say with some confidence, that he left his home in late April or early May.
Klaus Wust once said to me, in answer to my question of why so many Germans left in 1717, “War.” Now I get confused about all of the wars that went on in southwest Germany so I can’t say just which war it was. Perhaps the accumulation of all of the wars contributed to the decision to leave. I hope that his posthumous book on the whole process of German emigration will clarify some of these questions. I am inclined to believe that the 1717 emigration was another of the mass emigrations which swept Germany periodically.
An even bigger mystery to me is why so many of the Germans left very late in the year. The Gemmingen residents did not leave until July 12. I have been showing that this was not a typical departure date. By the time that these late departers arrived in London, the ships carrying passengers had left. The documents from the Public Record Office show that perhaps five hundred people were stranded in London in late August. For a while, there was a plan for sponsors to take them on to Bermuda. Apparently, no sponsors came forth.
Then it was noted that one hundred of these five hundred people had obtained transportation to Pennsylvania where they would become servants of others who purchased them. I believe that these one hundred people (all numbers are probably approximations) were the members of the Second Colony. Some of the documents written by members of the Second Colony imply that they had paid for their transportation, but I believe it was more likely that they were planning on paying for their transportation by selling themselves as indentured* servants.
Of the remaining four hundred people, we have some evidence that they petitioned the Crown for money to pay their transportation back to Germany. Apparently, the King did approve the transportation costs back to Rotterdam. We know that some of the people who did petition later became Germanna residents. What happened to these people in the year or so after September of 1717 is not clear. I am inclined to believe that they never left England but continued to stay there and perhaps remained in contact with the church of St. Mary.
(06 Jun 06)
(*An indentured servant was a person receiving some material gain (such as money, or, in this case, payment of passage money) who was bound into the service of another as a servant by a contract for a specified term. It appears that the term for the Second Colony was 7 years. GWD)
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.