Across the Ocean, Into Battle: German Soldiers, Families, and Communities in the American Revolution

 Historian Friederike Baer focuses our attention on the varied experiences of the German auxiliaries in the American Revolution. Between 1776 and 1783, Great Britain hired more than thirty thousand German soldiers to fight in its war against the American rebels. Collectively known as Hessians and accompanied by many civilians, including hundreds of women and children, they spent extended periods in locations as far-flung and varied as Canada and West Florida. Drawing on extensive research in German-authored private papers and official records, this talk examines the Hessians not merely as a fighting force but as a military community sustained through domestic labor, familial ties, and collective identity far from home. This program accompanies our current exhibition, Voices of Revolution, on view through January 10, 2027.

About the Speaker Friederike Baer, Ph.D., is an early American historian with a research focus on the American Revolution and Early Republic, especially the experiences of German-speaking people in North America between 1775 and 1830. She earned her Ph.D. from Brown University, where she studied under the late Pulitzer-Prize winning historian Gordon S. Wood. She has taught at the University of Georgia, Kutztown University, Temple University, and served as a project archivist at the American Philosophical Society. Since 2010, however, she has been at Penn State Abington, where she is currently a professor of history and division head for Arts and humanities. Dr. Baer is the author of two books and several journal articles and other works. Her first book, The Trial of Frederick Eberle: Language, Patriotism, and Citizenship in Philadelphia’s German Community: 1790-1830, was published in 2008 and was awarded the St. Paul’s Biglerville Prize for the best book in Lutheran Church history. Her second monograph, Hessians: German Soldiers in the American Revolutionary War, was published in 2022 and was awarded the 2023 Society of the Cincinnati Prize, an annual award that recognizes an outstanding book that advances the understanding of the American Revolution and its legacy. Throughout her career, Dr. Baer has also been awarded several fellowships and research grants at the Clements Library, the American Philosophical Society, the DAAD, the German Historical Institute, the David Library of the American Revolution, Virginia Historical Society, the Library Company of Philadelphia, and last but certainly not least, the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati Fellowship to study in our research library here at Anderson House. Recently, she served as a historical consultant and was featured on Ken Burns’s documentary, The American Revolution.

Battles of Saratoga at 250 Reenactments 2027 Reveal

 

Capt. Ferguson's Corps of Riflemen

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Ferguson rifle - Wikipedia

Kings Mountain Ferguson rifle event

 

On October 1, 1776, Patrick Ferguson demonstrated his breech loading flintlock rifle for King George III at Windsor Castle. During the demonstration he performed numerous feats of marksmanship which enabled him to patent his invention and raise an experimental corps of riflemen to test his rifle in the field. This year marks the 250th anniversary of that demonstration. To mark the occasion, we will be opening a new special exhibit “To See Which did the Most Execution: The Development and Trials of the Ferguson Rifle” on Thursday October 1, 2026 which will run until March 31, 2027. This exhibit will explore the story behind the development of the legendary Ferguson rifle and how it came to be put into service by the British Army. The exhibit will be located in the Kings Mountain National Military Park visitor center museum.

Waldeck 3rd Regiment

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Through living history, we interpret and teach the story of the German auxiliary troops who served alongside Crown forces during the American War for Independence. Based in Louisiana, we are actively recruiting reenactors to bring this history to life.

Fort Ticonderoga article on brown coats

 Continental Army Uniforms: Brown Was the First Red, White & Blue

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Search for a Continental Army uniform and you'll find a blue coat, trimmed with red and lined with white. But the first American uniform was brown.

A uniformly dressed American soldier did not exist at the outset of the Revolutionary War. Continental soldiers varied tremendously depending on which colony, region, or regiment they belonged to. New England colonies paid soldiers to bring clothing from home. Massachusetts clothed its Grand Army of 1775 in plain workman's coats of pale brown, with numbered buttons designating individual regiments. George Washington advocated for the hunting shirt, a coarse linen shirt with a cape and an array of fringe, from the western reaches of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Then the Continental Congress resolved that coats should be dyed brown, with each regiment distinguished by the color of their facings. Brown was one of the few things that Pennsylvanians and New England Yankees could agree upon.

By the time the Continental Army formalized blue coats, faced in red, and lined in white for the entire Continental Army, Fort Ticonderoga was already an historic ruin. Perhaps the only troops to serve at Ticonderoga clad in red, white, and blue were the soldiers of the Rhode Island Battalion, who guarded General Washington as he toured these historic grounds in July 1783, three months after the cease fire of the war for Independence.

Regiment Von Huyn

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