GERMANNA_COLONIES-L Archives

From: John Blankenbaker <>
Subject: (136)Germanna Colonies, History of
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 1997 16:00:45 -0400

The one hundred and thirty-sixth note in a series on the Germanna Colonies

The amount of information that the residents of a county can generate in
forty years, even with a population numbered in the thousands, not the
ten-thousands, is fantastic. Searching through this information for names
of individuals is not easy. That is why special seats of honor go to the
people who go through the records, extracting names, making sense out of the
data, and putting it into a form for others to use. John P. Alcock has done
this for Fauquier Co., Virginia in the forty years after its founding in
1759 to form an almost complete record of Fauquier's eighteenth-century
official history.

Let's take one record as an example. Martin Whitescarver (a Germanna name)
is listed with the following information (the only Whitescarver to be listed):
97W/Henry Carter-98W/Thomas C. Dickerson.
The numerals refer to the year so there are records in 1797 and 1798. The
letter "W" refers to the tithables list where Joseph Withers was responsible
(in the Northwest District) for the records. In this case, Henry Carter paid
the tithe in '97 and Thomas C. Dickerson paid the tithe in '98. This
pattern is typical of younger individuals who often lived with another
family. Whether Martin Whitescarver remained in Fauquier Co. isn't evident
since we have approached the end of the book in time. (The name
Whitescarver is usually given as Weissgerber in German; in America, it often
appears in the form Wisecarver.)

The first part of the book is in alphabetical form under the family name of
the individual to whom the information was judged to be most relevant. When
the abstract contains references to individuals with surnames different from
the principal actor, those names are cross referenced in the second section
of the book.

One of the bug-a-boos of eighteenth-century records is the wide variation in
spelling. Numerous variations of almost all family names were written into
the records by the clerks and the owners of the names. Different individuals
had their own rules for phonetic spellings. It is impossible to distinguish
between eighteenth-century Robinsons and Robertsons, Glascocks and
Glasscocks, Austins and Ostins, or Cannadays and Kennedys. Mr. Alcock, to
make efficient use of the pages, uses a standardized spelling for each
family name which is usually a common modern spelling. For example,
Holtzclaw is how the name is spelled for one Germanna family name even
though there are equally good variants such as Holsclaw. The forms Carnes,
Kearns, Keirnes, Kerns, and Kirns, with or without the "s" are all placed
under Kearns. But the author warns that the user should check for himself.

The book is meant to be a guide to finding the original records of interest.
Information contained in the abstracts is lean, but some genealogical
relationships are included. On one occasion, after the book was published,
I asked Mr. Alcock about the sons of Harmon Rector. By consulting his own
book, he was able to answer that one son was John, an attribution that had
not been made before. More generally, the original records will have to be
and will want to be consulted.

Unfortunately, not all records were able to be used. Since the book
appeared, the staff at the court house has found and indexed some loose
papers. Within these loose papers, Mr. Alcock was able to answer another
Rector question. But still, life is a lot easier for having books such as
"Fauquier Families."

to be continued
John Blankenbaker
Beyond Germanna
PO Box 120
Chadds Ford, PA 19317
http://www.wp.com/germanna/
http://www.concentric.net/~sgtgeorg/germhist.shtm

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