What were the motives of Alexander Spotswood for making the trip across the Blue Ridge Mountains? Some contemporary writers give us a few hints. Richard Beresford notes that a company of Rangers had discovered “a very easy passage for horses” across the mountains between the Rappahannock and the Potomac Rivers. (This would mean the marked passage at Swift Run Gap was NOT the passage.) Beresford goes on to note this might be an easier way to reach the western Indians.
Beresford then notes the citizens are speculating, “Some imagine this [the proposed trip] only an amusement That under the Notion of discovering this pass they make a more profitable Discovery of a mine: For near thereabouts a parcel of palatines are Settled in a Town Call’d Germanna some of which are miners & Given Some hopes of Mines that way, and Coll. [Franz Ludwig] Mitchell Your Engineer has Given in some propositions to the Treasury in England relating to the Mines which have been communicated back to the Governor of Virginia.”
This letter by Beresford was written July 4, 1716, to inform the Assembly in South Carolina about what was happening in Virginia. South Carolina was very interested in Indian trading while Virginia was attempting to intervene in South Carolina’s traditional area of influence.
Though many people in Virginia saw the motivation for the trans-mountain trip as a search for mines, I believe that the primary objective was a search for land. In 1716, the silver mine of Spotswood was a bust. The Indian trading company was nullified in London. So these two prongs in Spotswood’s retirement plans had failed or were failing. His next objective was to secure a large amount of land. Robert Beverley was urging him to join in a land venture to the west of Germanna. Under the guise of exploring the pass over the mountains, Spotswood was exploring the land between Germanna and the mountains. His path is a clue to his interest. The party went first along the lands claimed by Beverley while looking on both sides of the Rapidan River. In the following year and a half, he settled about eighty Germans on this land. He did not file for a patent until several years later, but his intentions were clear when the Germans were placed on the land that he had been exploring in the trans-mountain trip.
Spotswood often combined a public policy and a private objective. He told the folks back in England that the trip was for the purpose of finding a new route to the [Great] lakes and of foiling the intentions of the French. He hoped by this to obtain Royal approval including a payment for the expenses of the trip. The question of his expense report dragged on for several years and he never won approval for the money he had spent.
The Beresford letter was made available through the efforts of Andreas Mielke, Sandra Yelton, and Jim and Louise Hodge.
(13 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.