Besides the tour of Madison County, which included more than just that, there was a tour on Friday of Germantown, the Little Fork, and some Holtzclaw sites. I believe that in the Little Fork, the home of Frederick Fishback was visited. On the whole, this was an interesting tour with a lot of early history in it. Originally, I was going to sign up for this tour but Thom Faircloth asked me to lead the Madison County Heritage tour.
The highlight of Saturday was the Seminar but I may be prejudiced in my opinions. I emceed the Seminar, which was not very hard work, and I gave the first talk. The title of my talk was “ Susanna Klar (Clore) ”. While I tried to touch on all of her children, I concentrated on her daughter Elizabeth, who married Michael Yager. This presentation had two objectives. First, I wished to show that Michael Yager’s wife was Elizabeth Crigler, the daughter of Susanna Clore Crigler. Second, I wished to show that indirect evidence can be a valid method of arriving at deductions.
Another talk was given by Dr. Katherine Brown on a review of “ The First Fifty Years ”. This pertains to the Germanna Foundation which was chartered by the Commonwealth of Virginia on March 17 in 1956. Dr. Brown reviewed also some of the work going back even a few decades that preceded the formation of the Foundation. Not only were the beginnings reviewed but recent activities were reviewed, especially the trips to Germany that the Foundation sponsors. Dr. Brown’s talk was mostly based on her recent publication, “ The First Fifty Years ”, which was issued by the Foundation as Germanna Record Seventeen . Attendees at this 50th Reunion were given a free copy of this Record.
Thom Faircloth added some comments about the next fifty years. The Trustees have felt that a revision to the organization would be appropriate and they prepared plans which, it is hoped, would allow the Foundation to expand in the numbers of its members and to engage in a wider range of activities without swamping the paid leadership of the Foundation in a zillion details. At the same time, they adopted a conservative approach toward protecting the assets of the Foundation, which are, by now, very appreciable.
After lunch, Don Tharpe talked about Germantown and the history of the people who founded and lived at Germantown. Don is not a Germanna descendant but his interest in Germantown is certainly not weakened by that fact. This is not an unusual situation as the first President of the Foundation, Dr. Charles Herbert Huffman, was not a Germanna descendant either. Much good work has been done concerning Germanna by people who were not descendants.
(18 Jul 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.