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Alexander Spotswood was the first Virginia Governor to become interested in the glowing accounts which the hunters and trappers brought back from the hill sections of the colony. He determined to see for himself those distant blue ridges.

And while historians have not told us who guided him to the upper or western boundary of what was then Essex County, we are told that he became enthusiastic over the rich iron ore which he found in the peninsula formed by the Rapidan River. He decided to build iron furnaces at a point near the river. Later he had his agent, Baron de Graffenreid, go to Germany and bring master mechanics and their families to Virginia.

The first German colony came in 1714 to Virginia and journeyed to Germanna, as they called their new home on the bank of the Rapidan River. They were made up of twelve families and numbered forty-two people in all, men, women and children.

The Virginia Council passed an act which provided protection for the Germans. A fort was built for them, ammunition and two cannon were sent and an order was given for a road to be made to the settlement.

These men and women were brave, loyal and deeply religious. They belonged to the German Reformed Church, which was a branch of the Presbyterian family of churches. Here they organized the first congregation of that faith in America and here they built their church. They had come from Westphalia, in Germany, and of course had brought their own customs and manners, which are not entirely gone even in our modern Virginia. Later, as we shall see, many of this first colony left Germanna and settled on Licking Run near Warrenton.

In 1717 came a second German colony to Germanna. They too were brave, loyal, and devout; but were different from the first, being Lutherans and representing twenty families from Pennsylvania.

Two years later, the third colony of Germans came to Germanna and from there they settled in Orange and Madison counties.

If Governor Spotswood earned the title of "Tubal Cain of America", it was because these Germans were industrious, thrifty and honest.

The Governor liked the neighborhood so well that he had a palace built for his family. There was a terraced garden, which one may trace in the ruins found there today. A courthouse was built there, for a new county had been cut from Essex and was called Spotsylvania, in the Governor's honor. Nearby was a bubbling fountain spring at which tourists stop today to quench their thirst. This has been marked by the Colonial Dames and over it there is a hand-wrought iron standard, giving the legend of the spring.

In 1732, Colonel William Byrd of Westover visited Governor Spotswood at Germanna. He was one of the Commissioners who ran the boundary line between Virginia and North Carolina. He held many positions of honor and trust in the colony. His writings give an intimate picture of Governor Spotswood's settlement: