John Blankenbaker's Germanna History Notes

Note 2453

*[Ich habe den Tisch selbst gebaut.]

There has been a tremendous improvement in the Settlers’ List on the Germanna Association web page, see www.germanna.org .  The authors or creators of the current page admit that there might be still more improvement and/or corrections.  Without in any way being critical of what has been done, I thought I might spend some time on a discussion of this list.  I will concentrate on the Second Colony, certainly at first.

A major source of information for the names is the Headright List of Alexander Spotswood which appears in a patent of his to be found in Virginia Patent Book 14, page 378ff.  One of the questions that we must answer is a decision about is whether the appearance of a name in this list indicates that the person arrived in Virginia.  Ship captains typically charged a fare for everyone who boarded the ship even if the person did not walk off the ship.  If Spotswood’s list came from Captain Tarbett, it might include some names of people who did not live to see Virginia.  Examples, not necessarily an exhaustive count, are Joseph Weber and two of the three daughters of George Scheible.  Naturalization records or Head Right applications do not clarify this point as the Weavers and Scheibles did not apply for either.

We could adopt the attitude that these names do show that the people left Germany in 1717.  That, though, is hardly a correct attitude to take, since several people who did leave Germany in 1717 did not make it to Virginia until about 1719.  This too raises another question.  When we say the Second Colony, do we include all of the people who left their home in Germany in 1717, or do we only include those who made it to Virginia in 1717?  Perhaps there should be a statement in the Settlers’ List to how the Second Colony is being defined.

Now there are several names in the Headright List which are not included in the Settlers’ List.  For example, Hans Michel Milcher (perhaps Milcker), Sophia Catharina Milcher, and Maria Parvara (Barbara) Milcher.  Also, Hans Jerich (George) Wegman, Anna Maria Wegman, Maria Margaret Wegman, Maria Gotlieve Wegman are in the Headright List but not in the Settlers’ List.

There is good evidence that the other names in the Headright List are Second Colony members.  It should probably be assumed that all of the names in the Headright List are Second Colony members, even though there is the possibility that some of them may have died on the way; however, the Headright List is not a total enumeration of the Second Colony.  Both Spotswood and the Second Colony members put the number in the colony between seventy and eighty.  There are only forty-eight names in the Headright List.

*[I have built this table myself.]  (Are you noticing how many of these words in these statements suggest a word in the other language of the same meaning?)

[[Note from Webmaster:  In the study of languages, these similarly sounding words are known as "cognates".  They sound the same, or nearly the same, in other languages.  Consider the English "stool", the German "stuhl", and the Russian "shtul"?  (The German and Russian actually mean chair, but one can see that the words have a common origin.)  Sgt.George]]
(06 Feb 07)