1. The History of the Jamestown Marker
2. The First Germans in America, A Poem
3. First Germans at Jamestown
4. The German Glassmakers
5. The German Carpenters
6. German Sawmill Wrights at Jamestown in 1620
7. German Mineral Specialists at Jamestown in 1620
8. Bibliography
The following is from a Commemorative Booklet celebrating the formal dedication and unveiling of a Historical Marker located on Virginia Route 31 adjacent to the Jamestown Settlement Museum.
Courtesy of The German Heritage Society of Greater Washington, D.C.
The Commemoration of the First Germans at Jamestown is expected to be repeated annually until 2008, which is the German-American Quadricentennial. Copies of the commemorative booklet can be obtained by writing to: The German Heritage Society of Greater Washington, D.C., 4207 Oxford Drive, Silver Hill, MD 20746, Tel. 301-423-3937
Further resources and pictures from the commemoration ceremony are at the German Corner .
by Bradford Miller, Jr.
Immediate Past President
In March 1996, the German Heritage Society of Greater Washington, D.C. wrote Governor George Allen of Virginia to suggest that a Virginia State Historical Marker be erected to commemorate the arrival of the first Germans at Jamestown, Virginia, in the year 1608. We noted that such a marker would serve to recognize those early Germans as the forerunners of the many millions of German immigrants who followed and would also be an appropriate symbol for the upcoming 400th anniversary of the Jamestown settlement.
Governor Allen's office welcome our suggestion, and we made formal application for a Virginia Historical Marker to the Commonwealth Historian in June 1996. The comprehensive historical research required to support our application was put together in splendid fashion by Mr. Gary Grassl, then vice-president of our Society. The wording for the marker was formulated with input from Gary Grassl, Prof. Don Heinrich Tolzmann, and myself.
The Society then undertook a regional and nationwide effort to secure the funds to pay for the marker, this commemorative booklet, and the many other expenses involved in completing this project. I am happy to say that our call for financial support got a generous response from a number of individuals and organizations across the country. We received substantial contributions from as far away as Arizona, Utah, Ohio, Pennsylvania, as well as from Virginia and Maryland. Mrs. Ute Monique Behrens of Phoenix, AZ, was among the first to respond and insisted on writing a check for the entire manufacturing costs of the marker. Others, who are listed by name in this booklet, were equally generous in their spiritual and financial contributions. Our Society is grateful and invigorated by their overwhelming and heart-warming response.
On October 7, 1996, Mr. John Salmon of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources notified us that our application and wording for the marker had been approved. With the assistance of the Virginia Department of Transportation, a site for the marker was selected on Virginia Route 31 adjacent to the Jamestown Settlement Museum. The marker was erected by the Commonwealth in March 1997, and the formal dedication ceremony took place on May 31, 1997. Senator Paul Trible, President of Christopher Newport University in Newport News, VA, graciously offered his University theater for the ceremony, to be followed by an unveiling of the marker at the Jamestown site.
The German Heritage Society of Greater Washington, D.C., is proud to have initiated and carried this project through to a successful conclusion.
We believe that the marker constitutes a significant step forward in helping preserve the history of the German immigrants to America and in providing a monument for educating the general public on a neglected segment of our nation's history.
We are
the German speaking
from
the Low and High Lands
of
the European continent.
We bring
our hands
our skills
ideals and dreams
to this new world of
America.
We work
in unison
with all
in want
to create
a new homeland.
We pledge
our allegiance
to the future of
this country
and
its coming generations.
Ingeborg Carsten-Miller April 1997
The first seeds of this country were planted at Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in what is today the United States of America. The first English settlers arrived at Jamestown in 1607; the first German, in 1608. Therefore, Germans were present at the creation of this nation. The Germans who came to Jamestown in 1608 and subsequently in 1620 were the forerunners of the largest nationality to immigrate to the United States since its founding in 1776.
The first Germans to reach the Jamestown Colony came aboard the English vessel Mary and Margaret captained by Christopher Newport. They left England around July 1608 and arrived in Virginia around 1 October--12 years before the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts. They consisted of up to five unnamed glassmakers and three carpenters or house builders--Adam, Franz and Samuel. They came in a group of about 70 new settlers, including several Polish makers of pitch and tar, soap ashes and potashes. Jamestown at that time consisted of nothing but a small wooden fort on a peninsula of the James, a river, which flows into Chesapeake Bay near modern Norfolk, VA.
Among the settlers was a Swiss German mineral prospector called William Volday by the English; his original name was probably Wilhelm Waldi. He accompanied Captain Newport on a search for precious metals shortly after their arrival. This was done by order of the organizers of the Colony, the Virginia Company of London, a stock company. The colonists believed that they had found a vein of silver beyond the falls of the James River, but they were forced to return when their supplies ran low.
The Germans and the Poles faced precarious conditions at James Fort, which had been built on the north bank of the James River by June 1607. More than half of the original 105 settlers were already dead by the first autumn.
The story of the Jamestown Colony's first years is one of incredible hardships, failures, dissension, and premature death. It seems almost a miracle today that the settlement survived. The pioneer Germans were caught up in the same dire straits as their English companions, and they shared a similar fate. The settlers, few of whom were farmers or fishermen, were constantly short of food. Instead of first becoming self sufficient, the settlers were forced to spend time and energy in searching for precious metals or in producing products that might turn a profit for the parent Company in London.
The English traded copper and casting counters, among other things, for Indian corn. The copper, which the natives valued highly, came from the German-run and staffed Society of the Mines Royal headquartered in Keswick, England; it held the monopoly on the production of this metal in England. The brass-like castings counters or Rechenpfennig, many of which are still being found around Jamestown by archaeologists, bear their maker's names, such as Hans Laufer, Hans Krauwinkel and Hans Schultes zu Nürnberg; some bear such German inscriptions as Gotes Reich Bleibt Ewick (God's Kingdom Endures Forever).
The natives were accustomed to growing just enough corn to meet their annual needs; therefore, they had little surplus. When they refused to trade any more corn with the settlers, Smith forced them to hand over their supplies or see their villages burned.
In December 1608, Powhatan, the chief of the neighboring tribes, promised to provide Smith with corn if he would send him guns, swords, and an English coach in addition to building him a European-style house. At this point, Smith decided to send the German house builders to Powhatan.
When we commemorate the first Germans at Jamestown, we must not exaggerate the importance of these few men to the physical survival of the first permanent English Colony. Their assigned task of producing glass as a profitable product proved impractical; nevertheless, they produced the first "industrial" commodity in English America. The remains of their furnaces constitute the oldest existing structure in English America, the only one harking back to the earliest years of Jamestown. The house builders were placed in an untenable position by captain Smith when he sent them to the Indians: There they had to serve with unswerving loyalty two implacable enemies--Powhatan and Smith--an impossible task. Nevertheless, they contributed to the construction of Jamestown. The sawmill wrights made every effort to build mills, so important to the economy of the new Colony, but, like the majority of the early settlers, they succumbed to the diseases of the new land before they could complete their task. The mineral specialists leave behind an intriguing mystery. We learn no more about them than what is in the letter from the Colony's secretary. The story of the first Germans at Jamestown is the same as that of the first English: Initial failures that laid the groundwork for eventual success. The Germans at Jamestown probably all died without descendants (except the young man who returned and who may have left German descendants of a Jamestown settler).
The importance of the Germans at Jamestown is that they were among the first settlers of Virginia and English America, that they were valued for their skills, and although small in number, they were representative of the millions more to come. When we remember the first Germans at Jamestown, we can say with pride that Germans took part in the settlement that may be called with more justification than any other the place where the American nation had its beginning. They were thus present at the creation of this nation.
Captain John Smith, the President of the Jamestown Colony, complained that most of the settlers were unaccustomed to hard labor. They "never did know what a day's work was, except the Dutchmen [Germans] and Poles, and some dozen other." Many were unused to hard labor, because they were gentlemen. The German glassmen and carpenters and Polish pitch, tar and soap-ash makers, who were recruited from their particular countries because of their skills, went right to work producing commodities, including clapboard and wainscot plus "a trial of glass" to send back with Newport's ship around 1 December 1608. This first sample of glass was made at James Fort where Hessian crucibles with adhering glass were discovered by archaeologists.
After their initial experimenting with glass production within the Fort, the German glassmakers built a Glasshouse probably with the help of the German carpenters and others. Like James Fort, it faced the James River, which provided a ready supply of sand for glassmaking. The Glasshouse was located on the mainland, however, just beyond the narrow strip of land that connected it to the peninsula on which stood James Fort. It was described in a contemporaneous account as situated "in the woodsnear a mile from James Town." Its distance from the Fort exposed it to Indian attack, but its bordering forest provided the fuel for firing its glass furnaces and kiln. In fact, the reason the English wanted to establish a glasshouse in distant Virginia in the first place was because firewood was as abundant there as it was scarce at home. The colonists' secretary William Strachey described it in 1610 as "a goodly house ... with all offices and furnaces thereto belonging."
The Glasshouse accommodated three ovens made of river boulders cemented together with clay: A fritting furnace for preheating the glass ingredients, a working furnace for melting the glass and for keeping it at working temperature, and an annealing furnace for slowly cooling the finished pieces. The Glasshouse, which measured about 37 by 50 feet, also included a kiln to fire pots or crucibles used in melting the glass.
The foundations of the furnaces and the kiln have been uncovered by archeologist Jean Carl Harrington. They may be viewed behind a glass enclosure constructed by the National Park Service. An historical marker erected by the U.S. Department of Commerce at the entrance to the enclosure reads:
GLASSMAKING - 1608
HERE ON GLASSHOUSE POINT THE
JAMESTOWN SETTLERS, IN 1608, BUILT
FURNACES, MADE GLASS, AND SHIPPED A
"TRIAL" OF IT TO ENGLAND. THIS MARKED THE
BEGINNINGS OF OUR AMERICAN GLASS
MANUFACTURE, ONE OF THE NATION'S FIRST
"INDUSTRIAL" ENTERPRISES ....
Next to the remains of the original glass furnaces a replica of the original Glasshouse has been erected where visitors may watch costumed glassblowers making glass products in the 17th century manner.
It must be pointed out that the glassmakers of 1608 were more than that term connotes today. When they arrived in the wilderness, they had to first build their four ovens and find the raw materials before they could produce any glass objects. The modern glassblowers at the replica glasshouse--dressed though they are in 17th century costumes--had the glass ovens all ready made for them by people we would call engineers today. The German glassmakers of 1608 built their own factory, small though it was.
In 1609, the Glasshouse went into full production. According to Harrington, "Archeological evidence [shows] that considerable glass was melted and fabricated. It shows also that all of it was 'common green' glass." This was known as Waldglas in Germany. There is no documentation of glass production after 1609. "In any event , glassmaking most certainly would not have continued during the terrible period of starvation and sickness" during the winter of 1609-10 when "all but 60 of the 500 inhabitants of Jamestown died," writes Harrington. "Relief came to the Colony in the spring of 1610, but there is no evidence that the glass factory was revived at the time." We don't know if the operation ceased because of the poor quality of the sand from the James River (the replica glasshouse uses sand from Pennsylvania), the difficulty and cost of transporting such a breakable product such a long distance, or if the German glassmakers died during the winter of 1609--10 along with the majority of settlers.
After investigating the remains of the Glasshouse, Harrington concludes that "the colonists made a sincere attempt to start a manufacturing enterprise, and that even though the time was not ripe for success in their glass ventures, they were able to, and did, produce a workable glass comparable to that made in English glass houses."
Smith sent him Adam, Franz, and Samuel, who had arrived around October 1608 with the German glassmakers. (Powhatan is probably best known popularly today as the father of Pocahontas.) Smith was willing to send the house builders to the Indian chief, because he didn't have enough food for them to sustain their labor at Jamestown. But above all he wanted to use the substantial house they would build as a "castle," as he said, for trapping and killing Powhatan and as a subsequent refuge for himself, explains the American historian Conway Whittle Sams. This intended murder of Powhatan, however, was in direct defiance of orders from the Virginia Company of London to treat the native chief kindly. Smith tells us that he specifically instructed one of the Germans--Samuel--to spy on Powhatan so that he could get the chief in his grasp.
Smith sent the three German carpenters and some Englishmen by a direct overland route northward from James Fort about 13 miles to Powhatan's chief village. Werowocomoco was located on the north bank of what the English called the York River. It was situated near today's Purtan Bay, a corruption of Powhatan Bay. Here the carpenters began to construct one of the first substantial European-style houses in English America.
Meanwhile on 29 December 1608, Smith set out also for Werowocomoco with 46 armed men. But instead of going overland, he went in two small ships down the James and then up the York River. He arrived at the chief's headquarters on 12 January 1609.
When several of the leaders left behind at Jamestown became aware of Smith's intention to kill Powhatan, they tried to avert his misdeed by following after him. Their vessel sank, however, in a squall, and all eleven drowned.
Smith was unsuccessful in his attempt to kill the chief. "Of course Smith claimed his failure to kill Powhatan was not his fault," writes Sams. " We all love to blame some one else for our failures; and so Smith blames the Dutchmen for his failure. They had told Powhatan his plans; and the trap which he was laying,in the house they were to build for Powhatan, did not work." Nevertheless, Smith left the Germans behind to finish the chief's house.
Powhatan must have realized that Adam, Franz, and Samuel were bound by a special bond; perhaps he concluded from their distinctive language that they belonged to a different tribe from the English. Powhatan took advantage of this knowledge.
After Smith's departure, the chief forced two of the German carpenters, Adam and Franz, "two stout Dutch-men," to walk the 13 miles overland to James Fort before Smith could get back there with his ships. This was easily accomplished, because the ships had to travel the round-about way down the York and back up the James. Powhatan ordered the two Germans to ask for another set of arms and tools under the pretext that theirs were needed by Smith. Powhatan forced them to bring back these weapons by holding their compatriot Samuel as hostage. In the words of Smith, "Samuel their other consort Powhatan kept for their pledge."
American historians have condemned Adam and Franz for betraying the English by delivering two muskets and two swords to the Indians. But they had little choice: Smith had placed them between a rock and a hard place. Besides, many English settlers also conveyed weapons to the Indians. Smith said that a total of 300 hatchets, 50 swords, 8 guns and 8 pikes were delivered to the natives at this time.
Smith blamed all this also on the Germans. According to Smith, the German carpenters persuaded many Englishmen to arm Powhatan in order to destroy the English Colony. He would have us believe that these carpenters, who knew little English, were so eloquent and crafty that they could persuade a sizable number of English settlers to make common cause with the people they considered "savages" in order to destroy their own kind.
A more likely explanation is that the starving English were trading their tools and weapons for food. But Smith couldn't admit that conditions were so bad under his governorship that his men were forced to barter away their weapons to stay alive. So he invented a grand conspiracy organized by three German carpenters.
Meanwhile, the Germans lived in Powhatan's household, which included his daughter Pocahontas. The carpenters finished Powhatan's house, "in which he took such pleasure, especially in the lock and key, which he so admired, as locking and unlocking his door a hundred times a day, he thought no device in the world comparable to it."
Smith tried to kill Powhatan a second time, but when the captain arrived in Werowocomoco, he discovered that the chief had fled from the house the Germans had built for him. Smith again blamed the Germans for the chief's escape. He complained, "those damned Dutchmen had caused Powhatan to abandon his new house and Werowocomoco and to carry away all his corn and provision." But in fact Powhatan didn't need to be prompted by anyone to get away the moment his scouts told him Smith was coming. Wherever Smith went, he terrorized the countryside and forced the natives to hand over their corn.
George Percy, who would succeed Smith as chief executive of the Colony, characterized him as "an ambitious, unworthy and vainglorious fellow." Percy wrote that Smith "stuffed" his reports about what occurred at Jamestown with "many falsities" and malicious distractions ...." The American historian Alexander Brown thinks that Smith and the historians who relied on him did "great injustice" to "the men who gave their time, their talents, and their lives to establishing the first Protestant colony in our country."
Some time after Smith had returned to Jamestown from his second attempt to kill Powhatan, the German carpenter Franz, "a stout young fellow," appeared at the Glasshouse. Smith charged him with being up to no good because he was "disguised like a savage." The truth is that Franz simply looked like a native after having lived among them; certain Englishmen who had also lived among the Indians were later described as also having taken on an Indian appearance.
Smith sent 20 musketeers after Franz, who in the face of such a force retreated back into the woods. But he was captured, according to Smith. Franz himself said that he came voluntarily to Jamestown. He "extremely complained" that Powhatan had "detained them per force." Franz declared that he had "made this escape with the hazard of his life." He explained that "to save their lives they were constrained" by Powhatan to supply him with arms. Nevertheless Smith put Franz in shackles, and he sent message to Powhatan to return the remaining two Germans. Powhatan replied, however, the "the Dutchmen would not return, neither did Powhatan stay them; and to bring them fifty miles on his men's backs they were not able." Powhatan was having his little joke with Smith; the chief had his reasons for detaining the Germans.
Meanwhile, from about February to May 1609, a good deal of work was being done in and about James Fort, including the construction of "some twenty houses, and "a blockhouse in the neck of our isle" as protection. Since Franz was in Jamestown during part of this period, he would have participated in this building work.
In the summer of 1609 Smith got it into his head that Adam, Samuel "and one Bentley another fugitive" planned "to destroy the colony" in the service of Spain. This was a notion worthy of a science fiction writer. He sent "William Volday, a Zwitzar by birth," after them. But instead of bringing them back, the Swiss German, " this double villain"..."this wicked hypocrite" joined "his cursed countrymen ... to effect their projects ...." Smith then engaged two Englishmen "to go and stab them or shoot them." But when they reached the Germans, they decided against carrying out Smith's orders.
Powhatan then released Adam, but Samuel stayed behind. Adam and Volday then rejoined the Jamestown settlers without being punished, which shows that Smith's notion about their "villainy" was not shared by the rest of the colonists. As a matter of fact, when the colonists later arrested Smith and sent him back to England to face charges, one of these was that he had tried to kill the Germans who were with Powhatan.
Then we read this curious sentence in Smith's chronicle:"but Samuel still stayed with Powhatan to hear further of their estates by this supply." In other words, Smith kept Samuel with Powhatan to report to the captain about what the Indians were doing. This is curious indeed! First Smith wanted to have Samuel killed, because he allegedly sought to destroy the Colony. But a short while later, Smith decided to continue to keep Samuel as his personal agent with Powhatan so that he could ferret out the chief's plans. What a strange metamorphosis! One moment Samuel is so evil that he must be killed; a short while later, he is so trustworthy that he can be employed as Smith's personal operative.
In October 1609, Smith was shipped back to England a prisoner to face a number of charges, including having plotted to kill the German carpenters.
Late in 1609, while Samuel remained with Powhatan, the Indian Chief ambushed an English party of about 30 under Captain Ratcliffe whom he had invited to trade copper for corn. First Powhatan welcomed Ratcliffe to his village of Pamunkey and brought along Samuel and two Englishmen, Spelman and Savage, who were also staying with the Indians. This village was located near modern West Point at the tip of the peninsula formed by the confluence of the Pamunkey and Mattaponi Rivers. Powhatan let Samuel and the Englishmen stay with Ratcliffe that night. The next day, when the trading was going on, a dispute arose between the English and the Indians. Powhatan left the scene and took Samuel with him A war party hiding in the woods then killed almost all of Ratcliffe's men.
Henry Spelman, one of the two Englishmen with Powhatan, tells us what happened next: "Now, while this business was in action, the Powhatan sends me and one Samuel, a Dutchman, to a town about sixteen miles off, called Yawtanoone, willing us there to stay for him .... "The King [Powhatan], in show, made still much of us; yet his mind was much declined from us, which made us fear the worst. And, having now been with him about twenty-four or twenty-five weeks, it happened that the King of Potomac came to visit the great Powhatan, where, being a while with him, he showed such kindness to Savage, Samuel and myself, as we determined to go away with him.
"When the day of his departure was come, we did as we agreed, and having gone a mile or two on the way, Savage feigned some excuse of stay; and, unknown to us went back to the Powhatan, and acquainted him with our departing with the Potomac.
"The Powhatan presently sends after us, commanding our return, which we refusing, went still on our way; and those that were sent went still on with us, till one of them, finding opportunity, on a sudden, struck Samuel with an ax, and killed him ..." thus died the German house builder Samuel while trying to escape from chief Powhatan.
"The winter of 1609-10 has been described through the years as the 'starving time,' seemingly, an accurate description," writes the American historian Charles E. Hatch, Jr. It saw the population shrink to about 12 percent "as a result of disease, sickness, Indian arrows, and malnutrition."
"So lamentable was our scarcity that we were constrained to eat dogs, cats, rats, snakes, toadstools, horsehides and what not," wrote a contemporary. "One man, out of the misery he endured, killing his wife powdered [salted] her up to eat her, for which he was burned. Many besides fed on the corpses of dead men...."
During the "starving time," Adam and Franz returned to Powhatan, the alternative being death by starvation or disease. They may not have known that Samuel had been killed.
After the starving time, the English decided to abandon the settlement. "On June 7, 1610, the settlers, except some of the Poles and Dutchmen who were with Powhatan, boarded their ship and started down the James," writes Hatch.
"The next morning, while still in the river, advance word reached [them] that Lord Delaware had arrived at Point Comfort on the way to Jamestown and was bringing 150 settlers and a generous supply ... "On June 10, Delaware reached 'James Citty" and made his landing ... With the arrival of Delaware, the settlement was given new life and new hope."
The Swiss German Volday [or Waldi), who had gone back to England with Captain Samuel Argall in 1609 to report to the Company, returned with Lord Delaware to resume prospecting for minerals. Volday, however, died of a disease, as did the majority of the early settlers. Delaware himself took sick.
When the German carpenters Adam and Franz heard that the English were re-establishing their settlement, they tried to rejoin them, but Powhatan " caused his men to beat out their brains," states a contemporary report. The fact that the two German carpenters were killed trying to get away from Powhatan is surely proof that they were not collaborators.
The records of the Virginia Company of London for June and July 1620 show that four unnamed but "very skillful" sawmill wrights came from "Hambur rough" [Hamburg] to London for service in the Jamestown Colony. "Men skillful for sawmills were procured from Germany and sent to Virginia at the Company's great charge," wrote Alderman Johnson.
By 1620, the Colony had advanced beyond Jamestown, leaving small settlements up and down the James River. The Company was anxious to establish sawmills in the Colony so that planks and boards could be cut for building houses and constructing ships. However, Captain Thomas Nuce wrote from Virginia in May 1621 that the Germans were facing great difficulties. Swift streams were required to power the wheels of a sawmill, and the sawmill wrights had difficulty finding any in Tidewater Virginia. The natives, who were poised for a general uprising, still controlled the upstream areas, which made them dangerous for colonists. In addition, the Germans had great difficulty finding people to help them construct the sawmills. They even had difficulty obtaining sustenance.
Captain Nuce complained that the Germans couldn't build the sawmills and at the same time "look after their own livelihood." The company bade Governor Sir Francis Wyatt of Virginia "to take care of the Dutch sent to build sawmills, and seat them at the falls [of the James river], that they may bring their timber by the current of the water." The Company told the governor in July 1621, "And here we earnestly commend unto your care the Dutchmen sent for erecting of sawing mills, a work most necessary, since the materials for housing and shipping cannot otherwise without much more trouble, pains and charge be provided."
The Company repeated its entreaty to the Governor and Council of Virginia to aid the German sawmill wrights: "... we commend unto your care our Saw Mills, a work of such importance as it deserves your special furtherance, and therefore we desire the Dutchmen sent for the fabric of them may be extraordinarily well used, and carefully provided of apparel out of the new Magazine, which we would have paid for by the Company's tobacco. As for such necessaries as they want, especially beer, which we can now be shipped for want of time and tonnage, we have desired Sir Francis Wyatt to supply them with, which shall be repaid, and thus supplied we hope they will be encouraged to bring that so much desired work to perfection." In August 1621, the Company reiterated its appeal.
The sawmill wrights from Hamburg faced dauntingly difficult conditions in Virginia. The colonists were barely able to subsist, and many died from diseases against which their bodies had developed no immunities. As a matter of fact, 4 out of 5 colonists died within a few years of their arrival. "How so many people sent hither of late years have been lost, I cannot conceive unless it be through water and want ...." wrote Captain Nuce.
Alderman Johnson reported that the men "procured from Germany ... spent 7 or 8 months to find out a convenient place to set the mills on, which at last being found, the poor Dutchmen being dirtened by their unkind entertainment [treatment] in Virginia and almost famished by their mean provisions and being utterly disabled to bring that work to perfection without the help of many hands which an order of Court [of the Virginia Company] made here [in London] could not help them in Virginia. They oppressed with these and many other difficulties too great for them to overcome fell grievously sick of the diseases incident to the country...."
We learn from the records of the Virginia Company that "whereas they hired heretofore certain Dutch carpenters of Hamburrough for making of sawmills in Virginia, whither they being sent, died within a short time after (and only one returned) having effected nothing in that business ...."
The one who returned was the son of one of the mill wrights who had died in Virginia. He asked to return to Europe when he was the only one of the four left alive. The German widows of the three men who perished in Virginia after a stay of about a year asked for compensation, and the Virginia Company paid them altogether 27 pounds.
We learn from a letter dated 12 June 1620 by John Pory, the secretary of the Jamestown Colony, that "two Germans skillful in mines" have been sent to Virginia by the Company in London. Pory tells Sir Edwin Sandys, Treasurer of the Company, that he intends "to make trial of their skill." When Pory called the Germans "skillful in mines" he meant more that they were miners; in the 17th century, the term encompassed all aspects of winning metals, such as prospecting, mining, assaying and smelting.
When the Virginia Company of London employed these German mineral specialists, it followed an English tradition harking back to King Henry VIII. Mineral experts from Germany played an important role in establishing or modernizing the English mineral and metal industry under Queen Elizabeth I. The German mineral specialists Jonas Schütz and Gregor Bona (Gut) accompanied Martin Frobisher, the seeker after the Northwest Passage to China in 1577. Master Daniel the Saxon accompanied Sir Humphrey Gilbert when he tried to establish the first English colony in the new World in 1583. Joachim Gans, a German Jew from Prague, and German miners took part in 1585 in Sir Walter Raleigh's attempt to establish the first English settlement in what is today the United States.
Secretary Pory had high expectations of finding precious metals. Unfortunately, there were few metals for the two German mineral specialists to discover in Tidewater Virginia, while the natives still controlled the Piedmont and Appalachian regions. The Colony finally began some initial iron production early in 1622 at falling Creek, just south of modern Richmond. The German mineral specialists may have had a hand in this. Unfortunately, the Indian massacre of 22 March 1622 wiped out that enterprise along with one fourth to one third of the population of the Colony.
Alderman Johnson. An Answer to a Declaration of the Present State of Virginia. May 1623.
Barbour, Philip L.. The Three Worlds of Captain John Smith. Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1964.
_______. "The Identity of the First Poles in America." William & Mary Quarterly, Third Series, XXI, January 1964.
Brown, Alexander. The Genesis of the United States. New York: Russell & Russell, 1964.
Grassl, Gary C.. "Who Were the First Glassmakers in English America ?" The Report 43: A Journal of German-American History, XLIII, 1996, pp. 37-42.
Harrington, Jean Carl. A Tryal of Glasse: The Story of Glass-making at Jamestown. Richmond, VA: The Dietz Press, 1972.
Hatch, Charles E., Jr. The First Seventeen Years: Virginia, 1607-1624. Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, Jamestown Booklet No. 1, 1957.
_____. Jamestown, Virginia: The Townsite and Its Story. Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 1957.
Kingsbury, Susan Myra, editor. Records of the Virginia Company of London. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1935.
Percy, George. A Trewe Relacyon of the Precedeinges and Occurentes of Momente wch have hapned in Virginia.
Sams, Conway Whittle. The Conquest of Virginia: The Second Attempt. Norfolk, VA: Keyser-Doherty Printing Co., 1929.
Smith, John. The General Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles with the names of the Adventurers, Planters, and Governours from their first beginning An: 1584 to this present 1624. London: Michael Sparkes, 1624, Libro 3.
Wright, Louis B., editor. William Strachey's The Historie of Travell into Virginia Britania, 1610.
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