I have been writing about the troubles of the “Second Colony” in getting past London. Let me do a few notes on the land and the region from which most of them came.
Many of them came from the Kraichgau which is not readily found on maps. It was not sharply defined, either by geography or by political alignment. Roughly though, it is south of Heidelberg, west of Heilbronn, and northeast of Karlsruhe. This is the region from which many, but not all, of the Virginia Second Germanna Colony came. Historically and politically, the Kraichgau refers to a scattered collection of tiny, semi-independent territories. These little territories united in a loose, voluntary confederation of knights early in the modern period known as the Kraichgauer Ritterschaftskanton. They lie in the area where three larger states meet, namely Baden-Durlach, the Palatinate, and Wuerttemberg. Perhaps the uncertainty of just which of these states the small territories lay led to the rise of the power of the individual knights who banded together in a confederation to try and protect their semi-independence.
In 1599, membership in the confederation consisted of seventy-five knights, some of whom were very poor while some had more resources. These seventy-five knights owned seventy-two separate territories, the average size of which was fourteen square miles. This would have been an area not quite four miles by four miles and, if one imagines a village at the center, the farthest reach from the village would be about two miles. Most of these little areas had a church. The general characterization of the parishes would be subsistence-farming peasant communities. A few of the parishes, such as Sinsheim and Schwaigern, were market towns. In 1809, after a period of steady growth, the population was about seventy-eight persons per square kilometer or just about two hundred persons per square mile. Since a square mile consists of 640 acres, there would have been about three acres per person.
In the Seventeenth Century, especially during the Thirty Years’ War, the population was severely reduced. In the last half of the Seventeenth Century, the population was rebuilt with thousands of Swiss immigrants and some Huguenots. The Lutheran church dominated the region, but many belonged to the Reformed or Catholic churches. There was a sprinkling of Mennonites (such as Hans Herr) and Jews.
In time, after the 1599 confederation of the knights, some of the parishes came under the control or supervision of the larger states. The Palatinate, in particular, gained political control of some of the parishes, even while Hesse was in control of some of the Lutheran churches.
The inhabitants were in close contact with the rulers whom they might see frequently since they did not live far apart even though their standards of living differed substantially.
(12 Jun 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.