GERMANNA_COLONIES-L Archives

From: John Blankenbaker <>
Subject: (180)Germanna Colonies, History of
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 13:28:39 -0400

The one hundred and eightieth note in a series on the Germanna Colonies

The Colonial Record Project of the Library of Virginia makes available
abstracts or notes on the items in its collection. If you can access pages
on the web (on the Internet), then you can obtain images of the cards in the
index file. If you select one for more study, they will download or send a
file to your computer. To see this, you need a TIFF viewer (this is just an
acronym for Tagged Image Format File which is a standard method for encoding
images). If you do not have this program, you can download it from the
library. (I use the ability of my WordPerfect program to do this.) After the
file is converted, it can be read or printed as an image (picture).

The records from England which the library microfilmed and indexed are not
available as images. One can read the short abstracts of them as images. But
to obtain a copy of these documents requires an on-site presence at a
microfilm reader. On occasion I have selected documents to be copied or
printed. But there is a class of records at the library for which images of
the original document are available. In particular I refer to the early land
patents (from the Crown) and the grants (in the Northern Neck). You can
transfer these files to your computer and then convert them to images.

Saturday night I did some research on the land patents and grants of Jacob
Holtzclaw of the First Germanna Colony. I was particularly interested in his
1300 acre grant in the Little Fork district of today's Culpeper Co. but a
part of Orange Co. at the time. By the water ways, it lies between the North
Fork of the Rappahannock (Hedgman) River and the Hazel River. The land
between the North Fork of the Rappahannock and the South Fork of the
Rappahannock, also called the Rapidan, is the Great Fork. So the Little Fork
is also a part of the Great Fork.

On September 27, 1729, Jacob Holtzclaw obtained a patent for 680 acres in
this area when the land was thought to be outside the Northern Neck. So he
took out a patent from the King for this. Later, ca 1748, he extended his
holdings to the 1300 acres mentioned above, including the 680 acres, and
took a grant from Lord Fairfax for this amount. By then, the land was
considered a part of the Northern Neck. Many people did take out grants on
land they had previously patented to make sure they had all the bases
covered. But whether one did this or not, the quit rents were now due to
Lord Fairfax now, not the King.

Returning to the basic story, I downloaded the file which conveyed the image
of the grant to Holtzclaw by Fairfax. I converted the bytes into an image
and read the essential information in the metes and bounds, the description
by angles and distances of the outline of the tract. I entered these into
the DeedMapper (TM) program developed by a Germanna descendant, Steve
Broyles, and plotted the area. So sitting at my desk at home, I obtained a
copy of the grant and used the data "to walk around" the perimeter of the
tract. Then I placed the tract on an overlay of the waterways and roads. By
the time I was done, it was well past my bedtime but I had hardly noticed
the time as I was having so much fun.

Jacob Holtzclaw of the First Germanna Colony, besides being a school
teacher, a reader at church, and a farmer, was also active as a land
speculator. He obtained many hundreds of acres and invited people from
Germany to come and settle on these lands. Not surprisingly, many of the
people were neighbors or relatives from Germany. I have mentioned most of
these people here earlier. They came from about 1730 to 1750.
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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