By Rob Sherwood
from Inquiry, Volume 13, Number 1, Spring 2008, 45-55
© Copyright 2008 Virginia Community College System
Abstract
The author shares the rich historical setting of
Germanna Community College’s Locust Grove Campus, as well as the classroom
and college activities and events that have grown alongside his discoveries.
If you heard that there was an Enchanted Castle and a 300-year-old fort called Fort Germanna in some woods across the street from your community college, would you want to go to see them? Well, of course! This was my situation when I began working as an English instructor at Germanna Community College (GCC)’s Locust Grove Campus in the fall of 1993. At that time, like almost all the faculty, staff, and students, I had no idea of the rich and fascinating local history of our campus – or that it would soon become my overriding passion, lead to many student activities, and blossom into an ongoing series of events with local community groups that continues to flourish today. Perhaps this learning journey may serve to encourage other campuses in the VCCS to embrace more fully their own local history – as a source of pride, passion, and community involvement.
First Journey
In the spring of 1994, I was ready for my journey across the road into what I had learned was a protected 70-acre site owned by the Commonwealth and administered by the University of Mary Washington. (As you may know, Germanna’s Locust Grove campus is halfway between Culpeper and Fredericksburg on Route 3, at the easternmost point of Orange County.) I had already done much research on Germanna history in our library, poured over scrapbooks of articles, and met Archaeologist Doug Sanford, who had excavated the site from 1985 to 1991. I also had obtained permission to enter the site before I set out on a fine April afternoon.
I followed Germanna Highway west a quarter mile to
the Germanna Bridge where I gazed down at the lush Rapidan River with its thick,
greening banks of oaks, maples, and poplars.
I could see down to my left a parking area for a boat landing that
covered the foundation of an elaborate three-story 18th century grist and saw
mill built by Virginia’s most famous colonial governor, Alexander Spotswood.
Though brash and opportunistic, Spotswood, who served from 1710 to 1722,
was a man of vision and uncommon ability who left his mark throughout the
Commonwealth and most especially on Germanna.
Cars whooshed past as I turned, crossed the four-lane
road, and entered the tangled undergrowth of dark woods.
I found a path along the river that led me past remnants of Civil War
trenches and sentry pits that once guarded the strategic Germanna Ford, a place
where the river bottom was smooth and once men, beasts, and wagons could cross
when the river was low in summer.
This river crossing had been used since Indian times and was no doubt a factor
in Spotswood’s interest in the area, along with rumors of silver ore in the
vicinity.
The Germanna Ford had also been at a strategic
location in the Civil War – a major river crossing on what was then called the
German Rolling Road. Many skirmishes were
fought at Germanna, and four Civil War campaigns included large scale crossings
at the ford: Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Mine Run, and the Wilderness.
Ahead of me, the path led to a narrow stone bridge that spanned a small stream. This pedestrian bridge was built in the 1930s by the Colonial Dames of Virginia to encourage motorists to stroll in from the road for a drink from a famed spring just to the other side, the old Spotswood Spring. According to the 1732 diary of William Byrd II, A Progress to the Mines, which records his visit to Colonel Spotswood at Germanna, this spring once had a fountain spouting out of it and thus the little stream was called Fountain Run. The area had become overgrown and a bit forlorn, so I could just make out the date of 1932 on a rusted metal sign over the spring, the date the Colonial Dames rehabilitated the spring.
An old roadbed led away from the spring to a clear area on the river bank; this was the landing once used by the Germanna ferry, established in 1724 some 150 yards downriver from the ford, which employed a pull rope to cross the Rapidan. I followed the curving roadbed uphill past more Civil War sentry pits. As I reached level ground, I continued through a cedar thicket and saw numerous mounds; these, I was to soon learn, held the foundations of the early 18th century community of Germanna: a tavern, a forge, and homes.
Site of Enchanted Castle
Abruptly the roadbed opened into an open grassy area,
and I approached a cabin that had been transported to the site in the 1980s as
part of the excavation work. Steps
led up a seven-foot-high terrace, part of the landscaping done by Spotswood.
I passed by several millstones from Spotswood’s Mill set in the ground
outside the cabin.
Fifty yards behind the cabin were the remnants of a
large archaeological dig, the site of Spotswood’s elaborate Georgian-style
retirement mansion. This lavish home, the centerpiece of Spotswood’s large
plantation at Germanna, was built in the 1720s and became his primary residence
when he returned from a five-year trip to England in 1730. He lived there until
his death in 1740.
What remained from all these years of archaeological travail? There was a shed once used to house artifacts and a large area covered with black plastic and tree branches. Under the plastic were the painstakingly uncovered walls, foundations, and structures the excavation had unearthed, only some 55 percent of the site. Truckloads of sand had also been used in an effort to preserve the work until some future time when the excavation could be resumed or preserved in a suitable manner for public viewing.
There was
no sign of a fort, but I had learned that, at this spot in 1714, Governor
Spotswood settled a colony of 42 German immigrants who eventually formed
thirteen families, the First Germanna Colony. Because Spotswood paid off the
£150 debt this group owed the captain of their ship, they were contracted to
work for Spotswood for twelve days a year for four years.
This group of immigrants had left their homes in towns around Siegen,
Germany, the year before; they had been accompanied by a 70-year old minister of
the protestant German Reformed faith, Reverend John Henry Hager, to seek better
economic circumstances in the New World.
They were part of the first wave of German immigration to the colonies.
Spotswood went to great lengths to sponsor this colonization experiment
both with his own money and, where possible, at public expense. Part of this
effort included passing an act in 1714 that specified that the colonists would
owe no taxes for seven years (Blankenbaker). Furthermore, that this group was
from a mining region in Germany was not lost on Spotswood.
He wrote the Lord Commissioners of Trade in London a letter dated July
21, 1714 that outlined his plans to put them to work finding the supposed silver
ore in the area around the fort (Official
Letters of Spotswood 2: 70).
It is apparent that Spotswood never got the green light from the
Lords of Trade to mine silver, and, alas, no silver ore seems to have been
discovered. Evidence of the Germans
having looked for ore, however, has been found recently, in April 2005, just
east of the Locust Grove Campus, where some dozen mounds of white quartz
boulders (the rock known to yield metallic ores) have been located.
Spotswood also took care of the religious needs of the German Protestants by promulgating an act in 1714 that established the Parish of St. George, allowing services in German and exempt from the tithe to the Anglican Church (Acts of Assembly),
For four years, the First Germanna Colony lived at the fort, cleared land, farmed, hunted, raised livestock, and occasionally searched for silver. They attended daily church services in their native tongue given in the fort’s central blockhouse, establishing Germanna as the site of the first German Reformed Church in America. Then, in early 1719, their contract with Spotswood fulfilled, they bought a 1805-acre parcel of land at what is now C. M. Crockett County Park in lower Fauquier County and moved onto family farm plots that came to be called German Town (Germanna Record 2: 20-21).
Students Catch the Spirit
After that first visit, I began to talk about my discoveries
with my classes, always beginning with the magic words “Enchanted Castle” and
“Fort Germanna.” Students in my English 111 and 112 classes began to
choose Germanna history as the topic of their research papers, and in the fall
of 1997, we formed a club devoted to the discoveries we were making, the Fort
Germanna History Club. One of the club’s projects was to launch a website
in spring 1998 that featured student essays on Germanna history. This
site has now migrated to www.germanna.edu/lgc_history.
The club also began sponsoring the Germanna Historical Legacy
Series (GHLS), a monthly series of presentations by Germanna history experts
that had several presentations in 1999, and then monthly presentations from fall
2002 to the present. So far, through May 2007, there have been 25
presentations with an average attendance of 80. The series has highlighted a
distinguished group of experts on Germanna history, some of whom have given
several presentations. Each presentation has used slides or PowerPoint and has
been videotaped, so we have made DVD copies of the presentations, providing a
fast and entertaining way to learn about Germanna history. In addition to
being available at the Locust Grove library, these DVDs are available to the
public for a donation.
GCC student Ana Schramm wrote the following in an email after
a presentation she attended in fall 2006:
I really did not know so much history was hiding in either
side of Route 3, and under Germanna Community College. It is really amazing to
know that the college is on top of Civil War trenches, and that in the forest
next to the parking lot are the remnants of another life so different to our
lives today…. Being from Spain with a history so different to American history,
it is very interesting to me to know that across the street are sacred Indian
burial grounds, and the ruins of German pioneers' way of life.
Another student, Judy Hahn, wrote this reaction to a GHLS
presentation on 21 September 2006:
The area also felt the effects of the Civil War…which you can
still make out today. . . . Some of the worst fighting took place in the battles
of Stevensburg, Wilderness, Chancellorsville, and Culpeper. With all these
battles, supplies were sent wherever the men were and some passed over Germanna
Ford. If you visit that area today, the “Ford” is still discernable.
The land has seen more history than we can catalog going back centuries, and the
events that shaped and molded the area are forever etched in the land for our
archaeologists to discover.
Students have also written articles for publicity, made videos of walking tours and presentations, volunteered at the Germanna Foundation, helped to make maps of history sites, and organized history fundraisers. All of these efforts have raised awareness among students, staff, faculty, and local residents of the rich legacy of history at and around the Locust Grove Campus of GCC – and its relevance to and lessons about today’s world.
Success Breeds Imitation
The enterprising character
of the 1714 Germanna Colony encouraged Spotswood to settle a second colony of
German immigrants at Germanna in 1717.
All the 80 or so members of this second colony were Lutherans from the
Palatinate and Baden/Württemberg, regions in southern Germany that had been
ravaged by religious persecution and war.
This Second Germanna Colony was procured for Spotswood by the
ne’er-do-well Captain Andrew Tarbett of the ship Captain Scott in a
process of collusion that detoured the ship from its intended destination of
Philadelphia to Tappahannock, Virginia, on the lower Rappahannock.
This does show, however, how much Spotswood valued populating his
holdings with skilled Germans. The
group was settled on 400-acre family farm plots just across the river from Fort
Germanna. To work off their ocean
crossing debt to Spotswood, they spent their workdays harvesting naval stores to
be shipped to England: tar, pitch, hemp for rope, and trees for masts.
They also brought German grape stock with them and were able to begin the
first successful viticulture in Virginia.
Beginning in the GHLS of 2003 and continuing for a
span of four annual presentations, Thom Faircloth, president of the Germanna
Foundation, has proposed a thesis with important national significance about the
way Governor Spotswood sponsored the two Germanna colonies.
In both these ventures, Faircloth asserts, Spotswood was trying something
new. Instead of granting the rich Tidewater planters large patents of forests to
be cleared by slaves to grow more tobacco, he was “seating” poor, land-hungry
colonists in the new lands opening up in Virginia’s Piedmont.
Spotswood wanted to sponsor “small farmers” who would stay on the land,
populate it, and form permanent settlements. Germanna, then, became one of the
first Virginia settlements of landless immigrants willing to farm small plots, a
pattern of land settlement now familiar to us all in the subsequent westward
expansion across America.
Faircloth argues that the unique and far-sighted manner in which Governor
Spotswood located these two colonies of German immigrants at this site opened a
new chapter in the way immigrants groups were settled in America.
In a complex and far-seeing way, Spotswood was experimenting with what
would be the first of a new pattern of settlement of the colonies: settling
groups of skilled immigrants on large plots of land that they would “civilize.”
The success of these two colonies can be ascribed to a set of important values,
values at the heart of the American immigrant experience:
·
communal values to insure a
colony’s survival and ultimate success;
·
religious tolerance for attracting
useful immigrants (Spotswood gave the Germans their own German-speaking
Protestant parish);
·
accommodation with prevailing
culture (German and English);
·
good skills and the knack for
improvisation amidst difficulty, travail, and the wilderness; and
· ability to forge an “American character” from adversity and diversity (Faircloth).
As he continues research to support this thesis, Faircloth would like to write a comprehensive survey of Germanna history that details and updates the full record of what is now known about the Germanna story. He asserts that the notes he has used for his four sequential GHLS presentations will comprise the outline for the book.
Evidence for the Site of Fort Germanna
Dr. Doug Sanford, who excavated the Enchanted Castle from 1985 to 1991, uncovered tantalizing evidence that could lead to discovering the position of the five outer walls of the 1714 fort. Late in the 1991 season, holes thought to be from Fort Germanna’s palisaded walls were found in a clay substratum of the Enchanted Castle excavation, suggesting that both these structures overlapped. As we have seen in William Byrd’s diary, the Enchanted Castle is right across a small street from “a baker’s dozen of ruinous tenements…where so many German families had dwelt some years ago.” One day, when it can be done, this enticing archaeological clue will be tested—perhaps with ground penetrating radar or a similar device called a magnetometer—and the exact location of Fort Germanna will be determined.
The Germanna Foundation
No group has done more to research, honor, and preserve
the Germanna historical legacy than the Germanna Foundation, a nonprofit group
of descendants of the two Germanna colonies. In fact, the Locust Grove Campus of
GCC owes its existence to this group. Its 100-acre site was donated to the state
in 1969 by the group, whose full name is Memorial Foundation of the Germanna
Colonies in Virginia, Inc. In giving the site to the state, the Germanna
Foundation only had one request: that the college be named Germanna. One
estimate gives the number of descendants alive today from the two Germanna
colonies at 2.3 million, and the Germanna Foundation is the group that knits
them together. With a membership of around 2, 500, the Germanna
Foundation, according to its website, was founded in 1956 “to preserve and make
known the history and culture of the several Germanna Colonies, their operations
under the patronage of Alexander Spotswood, his residence and activities at
Germanna and in the surrounding area.”
Many of these reunion activities occur at the college, which enjoys a close relationship with the Germanna Foundation. The two groups share facilities and research materials, collaborate on history projects, and, of course, share a common interest in the Germanna legacy.
The Germanna Foundation also owns 176 acres that surround the Locust Grove Campus south of Route 3. Both the 100 acres of the campus, itself heavily wooded, and the foundation’s land, virtually all woods, are crisscrossed by four Civil War trench lines as well as by a network of history, nature, and fitness trails – and many historical sites.
Other Historical Features
Just to the left of the entrance to the campus, a Civil
War breastwork trench rises almost chest high and leads right up to the main
building. Just outside the campus library are cannon pits whose
ordinance would have been trained on the Germanna Ford only a quarter-mile away.
On the other side of the main building of the campus is a continuation of this
main breastwork trench, which bisected the entire horseshoe peninsula of
Germanna, a distance of about a mile. About 150 yards to the east of this
trench and an equal distance off the faculty parking lot into the woods is the
well-preserved stone foundation of a large house thought to date to 1734.
The basement fireplace is of good workmanship and is still intact, as is an
unusual corner entranceway into the basement. Dozens of large, finely cut
stone pieces litter the site whose quarried stone is thought by Dr. Kerri Barile,
an archaeologist with a cultural preservation business in Fredericksburg, to be
from the same quarry as that used by Spotswood to build the Enchanted Castle.
In January 2006, a second foundation was discovered by
Jeff Yowell, the groundskeeper at GCC (and himself a Germanna descendant), on
Germanna Foundation property to the east of the campus soccer field. This
foundation, which is smaller than the one off the faculty parking lot, features
similar examples of well-hewn stonework. Both of these sites will require
full excavations to explore their mysteries.
Just behind the Brawdus Martin Germanna Visitors Center is a striking black
granite obelisk flanked by four large inscribed granite markers, the Germanna
Foundation Memorial Garden. The obelisk marks the grave of John Spotswood
(1725-62) who was Alexander Spotswood’s elder son. The four memorial monuments
celebrate the accomplishments of two Germanna colonies and the formation of the
Germanna Foundation.
A trail into the woods behind the Memorial Garden leads to a small family
cemetery bordered by a small rock wall.
Here is the gravestone of Dr. Charles Urquhart, the doctor who pronounced
President Lincoln’s assassin John Wilkes Booth dead in Port Royal, Virginia, on
April 26, 1865. Dr. Urquhart was
born at Germanna; his parents operated Spotswood’s mill, then called the
Urquhart Mill, until it was burned down early in the Civil War.
Chimneys survive from the Urquharts’ house that was also burned down early in
the war; these chimneys are a short walk to the west from the cemetery at a nice
spot overlooking the river and the site of the mill.
Right along the bank of the river for a quarter-mile
upstream from the mill site are the remnants of the original Mill Race that was
dug in the 1720s to supply a steady source of water power for the mill. Then, in
the 1820s, under a project begun by President George Washington to improve the
navigability of American rivers to the west, the mill race was enlarged into a
canal around a stretch of rapids, and it is one of what were thought to be eight
such canals on the Rapidan. The
Visitors Center houses several bell hasps found in the river at Germanna that
once held bells used to summon a lock keeper to admit boats in and out of the
canal.
Right at the mill site, just about fifty yards
upriver from the present-day Route 3 Germanna Bridge, piers of two previous
bridges can the seen in the river, the 1917 bridge and the 1848 Germanna Bridge
that was burned in the Civil War.
Steps into the
Future
Needless to say, we at GCC
are blessed to have this treasure trove of history right on or just adjacent to
our Locust Grove Campus. This
history has become a source of pride and a legacy to ponder, question, and
research. The woods, the river, and
the proximity of wilderness are great blessings, too, especially as development
after development now threatens to engulf GCC from Fredericksburg to the east
and Culpeper to the west. But the
real blessing is the impact this history is having on the minds of students,
staff, faculty, and local citizens at and around the Locust Grove Campus.
As we try to bring the
past into the present, the enterprise of the Germanna legacy presents intriguing
opportunities. Germanna Community
College, in alliance with the Commonwealth of Virginia, the University of Mary
Washington, the Germanna Foundation, and local community groups, can embark on a
series of exciting projects – eventually open to the public – to firmly implant
Germanna history on a regional, state-wide, and even national basis. These might
include the following:
·
Find Fort Germanna, using ground-penetrating radar,
and then mount a full-scale excavation.
·
Build a replica of Fort Germanna nearby the
excavation to show what it looked like.
·
Re-open the excavation of the Enchanted Castle site
so that it can be completed.
·
Preserve the excavation work on the Enchanted Castle
for public display.
·
Selectively excavate the foundations of other
structures—taverns, shops, homes—from the town of Germanna, first county seat of
(the old) Spotsylvania County, c. 1722-28.
Build replicas nearby as appropriate.
·
Set up a walking tour around the Locust Grove Campus
and another that goes from the Visitors Center to the Fort Germanna/Enchanted
Castle site.
·
Excavate and interpret the 1734 colonial ruin off the
faculty parking lot, and build a replica of it nearby.
·
Start a historical interpretive docent program at
GCC.
·
Preserve and partially restore sections of the Civil
War trenches and gun pits of the Locust Grove Campus.
This learning about the
local history at my community college has taken the form of a journey that I
share continually with my classes, my colleagues, and my community.
Furthermore, this journey continues to gain momentum as more and more
students get involved; as more local historians share their insights and ideas;
as new history sites continue to be found, explored, and shared; and as college
support increases each year.
The historical legacy at the Locust Grove Campus is of great significance to Virginia and should be an inspiration to all those who learn about it. I hope faculty, staff, and administrators at other VCCS campuses derive some encouragement by this article to embark on their own odysseys of discovery of their own campus’s affiliations with local history. This year, 2007, as Virginia celebrates its 400th anniversary, we at the Locust Grove Campus of Germanna Community College know that 300 of those years have played out a rich pageant of that history right on and adjacent to our campus!
Works Cited
Acts of Assembly Passed in the Colony of Virginia from 1662 to 1715. (Printed in London, 1727.) Richmond, Virginia: Virginia State Library.
Barile, Kerri Saige. Archaeology, Architecture, and Alexander Spotswood: Redefining the Georgian Worldview at the Enchanted Castle, Germanna, Orange County, Virginia. Dissertation. University of Texas at Austin, December 2004.
Blankenbaker, John. Beyond
Germanna: The Newsletter.
(90 issues of the Beyond
Germanna newsletter compiled on CD.)
Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.
Byrd, William II. A Progress to the Mines, 1732. The Westover Manuscripts. First ed. Petersburg, Virginia: Edmund Ruffin, 1841. Electronic Edition, Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina, 2001.
Faircloth, Thom. Presentation for Germanna
Historical Legacy Series, 2003.
Germanna Community College. 2007. http://www.germann.edu/lgc_history.
Germanna Historical Legacy Series (Collection of
DVDs). Germanna Community College,
The Germanna Record. 16 vols. The Germanna Foundation. Locust Grove, Virginia.
Hahn, Judy. Email communication. 21 Sept. 2006.
Kelso, William. Email communication. 27 Aug. 2007.
Mary Washington College Center for Historic Preservation. Press Release. 22 June 1990.
Schramm, Anna. Email communication. 23 Aug. 2006.
Spotswood, Alexander. The Official Letters of Alexander Spotswood. 2 vols. Collection of the Virginia Historical Society. Richmond: AMA Press, 1973.
Rob Sherwood is an instructor of English at Germanna Community College’s Locust Grove Campus.