Old books with historical information intrigue me. This book is out of copyright but has valuable information about early Virginia and West Virginia settlers with a German heritage. Knowing that most of the earliest setters passed through the Shenandoah Valley, you should especially take a look at this book if you have ancestors from Germany. What I would like to share with you are the Contents, the Bibliography, and the Index so you can decide if the book is worth your time.
Two notable characteristics of the Germans stand out for me: the first is their firm opposition to slavery. The other is their commitment to education and literacy. Germans first arrived in Texas later than in West Virginia—around 1831. Having taught Texas history, I can tell you that the Germans in Texas had the first public schools. In Wayland’s book, he includes this quote in the section on education (page 153)1:
Whether the immigrants called themselves Pietists, Mennonites, Dunkers, Moravians, German Quakers, members of the Reformed Church, Lutherans, or simply dissenters, and however great their differences of opinion in the interpretation of the Bible may have been, on one point at least they were united. They all believed with Martin Luther: “Burgomasters, princes, and nobles we can dispense with; schools cannot be dispensed with, for they must govern the world.”
I have noticed in census records that some of my ancestors with German heritage were shown as “cannot read and write”. It is my belief that they could read and write but perhaps not in English. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to prove my theory right or not. I do know that they did not have slaves.
Photo below is from History in New Braunfels site.
The Bibliography is about 35 pages long (pages 237-272), and I assume many of the sources are no longer available. However, it might be worth looking for some of them on Archive.org or other sites that provide access to out-of-print books. I would love to post all those pages here, but it would just take up too much space.
The Index is also quite long: pages 273-312 (39 pages), so it is too long for me to post the pages here. However, I did post it elsewhere. Here is the link.
I intend to track down as many of the sources listed in the Bibliography as possible. Additionally, I will try to post vital records of German families that I know settled in Southern West Virginia.
Hope you find something good in the pages of this book.
Report of Commissioner of Education, 1901, Vol. I, p. 539. See also Rupp's Thirty Thousand Names, pp. 13, 14.