Thanks to all involved in the Haddonfield Skirmish! See you next year - June 7, 2025!
"Naked and Torn by the Grapeshot": History, Archaeology & Reactions to Red Bank Hessian Mass Burials
Event held on April 22
Meet the team in charge of the 2022 archaeological dig at Red Bank battlefield, where at least 15 individuals were found in a mass grave and believed to be Hessians. The team excavated the remains and sent them for forensic analysis, tried to identify the individuals to share their stories, and offered them the burial they did not receive in 1777.
Wade P. Catts, archaeologist and professor, Rowan University
Jen Janofsky, professor, Rowan University; director, Red Bank Battlefield Park
ABOUT the Red Bank Battlefield Archaeology Project
Rowan student Raluca Muscan and historian Jen Janofsky discussing Red Bank archaeological finds
Who Were the Hessians Buried at Red Bank?
Event held on April 29
The failed attempt on October 22, 1777 to take Fort Mercer – now Red Bank Battlefield Park – lasted barely 40 minutes but it took the lives of almost 100 officers and members of the Hessian Grenadier rank and file and of the von Mirbach Regiment. Charles Simpkins of the Cumberland County Militia deposed in his 1832 pension application that their life-less bodies “were buried in the trenches – that he saw the ground stained with blood.” There they lay for almost 250 years, until the discovery of the remains of some of these fallen Hessians in the summer of 2022.
This discovery raised a question that had rarely been asked since that fateful day in October 1777: Who were the men whose skeletal remains had been unearthed? And, more generally, what can we still find out today about the dozens of men killed and still buried in the trenches around the fort?
Based on in-depth research into primary sources held by the Hessian Staatsarchiv in Marburg, Germany, this illustrated talk describes the painstaking efforts undertaken during the past year on both sides of the Atlantic to crack the secrets of the dead Hessians.
Presenter
Robert A. Selig is a native of Germany with a Ph.D. in history from the University of Würzburg. He is the author of African-Americans, the Rhode Island Regiments, and the Battle of Fort Red Bank, 22 October 1777 (2019), and co-author with Wade Catts of “It is Painful for Me to Lose so Many Good People”: Report of an Archeological Survey at Red Bank Battlefield Park (Fort Mercer), National Park, Gloucester County, New Jersey (2017). From his time in the German Bundeswehr in Kassel he well remembers the very hills and villages also known to the Hessians buried at Red Bank.
Dr. Robert A. Selig
Conquered Little but Lost Much: German Soldiers in the American Revolution
Event held on May 7
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, the soldiers and accompanying civilians, including hundreds of women and children, spent extended periods of time in locations as dispersed and varied as Canada in the North and West Florida in the South. The presentation examines how members of the German corps described the American war, the land, and the people. It will pay special attention to the experiences of the German troops in the mid-Atlantic region.
Presenter
Friederike Baer is Associate Professor of History at Pennsylvania State University, Abington College. She holds a Ph.D. in early American history from Brown University. Much of her research has focused on the experiences of German-speaking people in North America in the periods of the War for American Independence and Early Republic. For her most recent book, Hessians: German Soldiers in the American Revolutionary War (2022), she was awarded the 2022 American Roundtable of Philadelphia Book Award and the 2023 Society of the Cincinnati Prize.
Dr. Friederike Baer