German-American Heritage Foundation of the USA
When:
February 11, 2016
6:30 pm
Where:
German-American Heritage Museum of the USA
719 Sixth Street NW
Washington DC 20001


The German-American Heritage Foundation and its member Germanna Foundation are proud to announce the opening of the latest exhibit of the German-American Heritage Museum of the USA. On display through March, Colony 1714: Germanna and the Ironworkers is the inaugural exhibit in the Museum's exhibition series German Entrepreneurship.

On Thursday, February 11th, at 6:30pm the German-American Heritage Foundation is proud to present Dr. Katharine Brown, Trustee of the Germanna Foundation, who will give a lecture on Germanna, its history, and the research behind producing the exhibit panels. A cocktail reception will follow.

This exhibit presents the story of the founding of the westernmost settlement of the British Empire, and the surprising fact that it was German speaking from the very beginning. The visitor will come away with a deeper understanding of how the imperatives of trade, transatlantic migration, and geopolitics drove Virginia's colonial Governor Alexander Spotswood to identify, recruit and settle talented ironworkers from the German Siegerland to a small fort on the frontier of European civilization.The settlement of the 42 colonists of the Reformed faith from the iron-working Siegerland  doubled three years later by the arrival of 20 German-speaking Lutheran families, with more to follow. The ancestors of the Germanna colonists came from modern-day North Rhine-Westphalia, the Palatinate, Baden-Wuerttemberg, Austria, and Switzerland.

Guest speaker Dr. Katharine Brown is proud to descend from 1714 Germanna immigrants John Jacob Rector and his wife Anna Elisabeth Fishback, as well as from Elisabeth's immigrant parents, Philip Fishback and his wife Elisabeth Heimbach, and Peter Hitt and his second wife, Elisabeth Otterbach, daughter of the immigrants Hermann Otterbach and his wife Elisabeth Heimbach.


Born in Parkersburg, West Virginia, Katharine grew up in the 1878 house her Rector ancestor William Nelson Chancellor built, and that she and her husband Madison are now restoring. She graduated from Hollins College then received a Ph.D. in history from The Johns Hopkins University. She has been executive director of the Stonewall Jackson House in Lexington, Virginia, and the Woodrow Wilson  Birthplace (now Presidential Library) in Staunton, Virginia, and director  of research and collections at the Frontier Culture Museum of Virginia.  For the past ten years, she has been a founding partner of Lot's Wife  Publishing, a local history publishing company. She is the author or co-author of a dozen books on Virginia history and church history. She is an adjunct Professor of History and Art at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, where she has taught historic preservation, museum studies, and furniture history for the past 25 years. She and Madison are the proud parents of three married sons and grandparents of three granddaughters. They have enjoyed leading each of the Germanna trips to Germany, and Katharine also chairs the Foundation's publications committee. She is the author of Germanna Record #17.

When: Thursday February 11, 2016 from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm EST

Where: German-American Heritage Museum of the USA
            719 Sixth Street NW, Washington, DC 20001

All attendees are requested to RSVP in advance. Admission is $10, $5 for students and seniors. Please follow the link below.
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