William A. Caruthers’ first attempt at writing “ The Knights of the Golden Horse-Shoe ” came to naught as the manuscript was destroyed when his house burned down. He started again and rewrote his story. It was first published in serial form in the Savannah magazine, “ The Magnolia ” in 1841. Then he gave the manuscript to a southern book publisher of limited ability to publicize the final result, which limited the initial exposure. It was Dr. Caruthers’ best work of fiction and his last also.
The novelist never used the phrase, but the ideal of American expansionism as a destiny is the basic subject. Of course, by the time that he wrote the book, more than a century after the events he purports to describe, western expansion was obvious for the United States. It is doubtful in 1716, that the Colonials would have foreseen the extent of this. There were several books that Caruthers might have used to obtain the few facts which had been preserved of the 1716 trip over the mountains. Of these works, only the books by Hugh Jones, “ The Present State of Virginia . . . ”, and the book by Robert Beverley, “ The History and Present State of Virginia ”, were written at the time of the trip. Caruthers would have Hugh Jones as a member on the trip but his knowledge of the trip was second hand.
Temple Farm, the scene of the opening pages of “ The Knights ”, has no proven connection with Spotswood or any of his family. The year was 1716, not 1714. The “army” was 63 men, 74 horses, and a few dogs. The actual trip encountered neither Indian threat nor hunger privation. It was not the earliest party to penetrate the Valley of Virginia (two individuals who could speak German were among the earlier explorers).
The source of the idea that Spotswood presented the gentlemen who accompanied him with small golden horseshoes was Rev. Hugh Jones. This was not confirmed by John Fontaine who was also a good friend of Spotswood and who wrote a more detailed history of the trip which was unknown to Caruthers. Caruthers listed thirty-one gentlemen with Spotswood which is much larger than the evidence shows. The modern author of the introduction to “ The Knights ” lists among the gentlemen, two names of special interest to us, Stephen Harnsberger and Francis Hume. The latter was Spotswood’s representative at Germanna.
As to the Golden Horseshoes, the author of the introduction states, “To date, not a single fully authenticated specimen has been found.” There are lots of stories that generally say that a person knew a person who knew a person who had seen one. The introduction to the book actually has a picture of what might be one of the horseshoes. The flaw in this is that one of the words is misspelled and it would appear to be a later attempt to duplicate the limited description that Jones gave.
(12 Sep 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.