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Archiver > Melungeon > 2006-07 > 1151825774


From: Elizabeth Whitaker <>
Subject: Re: [Melungeon] Jermantown
Date: Sun, 02 Jul 2006 00:36:14 -0700
References: <20060902013428.41020.qmail@web52204.mail.yahoo.com><000601c6ce31$0b92d790$6601a8c0@PC195003250815><001701c6ce39$1eba4760$6401a8c0@charlie1>
In-Reply-To: <001701c6ce39$1eba4760$6401a8c0@charlie1>


At 07:40 PM 9/1/2006, ljcrain wrote:
>I want to say thank you to all who responded. I was working on this
>offlist with a friend who has researched Fairfax county very
>thoroughly and it had her stumped.
>
>We are still looking for info.
>
>Janet

There was a large enough of a German-speaking population in what is
now northwestern Virginia as late as 1850 for there to be a German-language
publishing industry producing a few German-language books and some
German-language newspapers. I don't do much Virginia research, but
I remember visiting an exhibit on Virginia-based German-language
publications in the 1800s some years back hosted by the museum at the
battlefield at New Market, Virginia, which is in the Shenandoah Valley.

Having worked with some of the descendants of the old free
African-American families of Northern Virginia, I would like to
encourage serious work
on those families. However, I have not been in Virginia since I left
in 1987: one thing I've found to be a major problem in genealogical research
is the localization of resources that aren't on microfilm. It can be
nearly impossible to obtain anything genealogical by InterLibrary Loan, mainly
because there is, all too often, just one copy surviving, and that
copy is often in too poor a condition for either photocopying or shipping --
and microfilming anything is more expensive that either shipping or
photocopying it. (I've worked in an archives.)

Elizabeth Whitaker

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