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.
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