On the way to Richmond for the PalAm Conference, Eleanor and I stopped at the Rappahannock Regional Library in Fredericksburg. I have a soft spot in my heart for this library. When I was starting Beyond Germanna, a subscriber sent money for a subscription for them and they became the first library in a long list of libraries who received Beyond Germanna.
I was drawn to the abstracts of the deed books for Orange County to see what I might find about the lands of Alexander Spotswood where the Second Colony was first located in 1717/18. I didn’t find anything new but a couple of early deeds caught my attention.
On 19 & 20 April 1736, John Trotter of York County, blacksmith, leased and released to David Christler of Orange County, labourer, for 20 pounds current money, 418 acres . . . on top of a hill . . . side of a mountain . . . side of a hill . . . taken up by James King of St. George’s Parish, Spotsylvania County, and afterward sold to John Trotter. Witnesses: J. Wood, W. Russell, Christopher Zimmerman, Leenhart Ziegler. Signed Jno. Trotter (no wife mentioned).
In the Patent Abstracts by Nell Marion Nugent, there was a 418 acre patent to James King on the Island Run in the first fork of the Rappardan River, dated 8 July 1728. So in the eight years following this it was sold to John Trotter and then to David Christler. Probably the land had never been developed.
James King had another patent in the same general area which was described as adjacent to John Broyles and Michael Holt; however, the two King patents were not said to be adjacent though it would appear that they should not be far apart. I have plotted the location of this last King patent in Beyond Germanna on page 597.
I was struck by the choice of Christopher Zimmerman and Leonhard Ziegler as witnesses. The first of these definitely, and I also believe the second, lived in the Mt. Pony area which is a good twenty miles from the land from the land that Christler bought. Why did David Christler get these two men? Zimmerman and Ziegler did live closer to the Orange County Courthouse than most of the other Second Colony members. Was this the reason, or was there a deeper reason that Zimmerman and Ziegler were chosen as witnesses? Zimmermans and Zieglers were close with several marriages later but nothing unusual shows up in the Christler/Crisler family.
I take it that David Christler was also known as Theobald and Dewald and that he was the head of the Crisler family in Germanna. He married Rosina Gaar who was born in 1713. (There is a slight possibility that David Crisler and Rosina Gaar knew each in Pennsylvania.)
(26 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.