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From: "Bob Brooks" <>
Subject: Pennsylvania POWs 1781-1782
Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 17:42:18 -0500
References: <BAY21-F288CE37A3802289A29B2C1E4440@phx.gbl>


Nelda wrote:
<clip> I but I thought that some or all of the prisoners
> at Lancaster were Hessians.

I believe that some of the POWs at Lancaster in 1782 were Germans; however,
I believe the majority were British. Lancaster had been the major POW camp
for the Hessians captured at Trenton but by the end of the summer of 1778,
most of the Hesssian POWs held there had either deserted or been exchanged.
I am not qualified to discuss events at Lancaster after that time.

Other PA locations besides Lancaster which held POWs included Reading, York
and Carlisle, plus probably some other, smaller sites. Of course, following
the evacuation of Philadelphia in June 1778, the New Gaol on Walnut Street,
used by the British for the interment (and mistreatment) of American rank &
file POWs was used to inter Hessian POWs.

In his 16 Oct 1781 letter from New York Hessian Adjutant General Major Carl
Leopold Baurmeister wrote [Uhlendorf's translation]: "One hundred and
twenty officers of Burgoyne's army, exhanged in Connecticut, arrived in the
city a week ago and have been quartered on Long Island. Brigadier General
Hamilton was in charge of the British officers, Lieutenant Colonel
Mengers[*] of the Brunswickers, and Lieutenat Colonel Lentz, of the
Hersse-Hanauers. The noncommissioned officers and privates at Reading and
Lancaster are gradually running away, as that now not even a thousand are
left." [* sic; Mengen from the Regt. v. Riedesel]

In his letter of 14 Dec 1782, 14 months later, Baurmeister wrote: "The
Brunswick and Hanau prisoners have repeadedly been ueged to enter into three
years servitude with farmers, who will pay eighty Spanish dollars per man,
or else serve in Washington's army for eight pounds recruiting money and
under the conditions that every noncommissioned officer keep his rank, and
that at the close of the war everyone be given a hubdred acres of land and
freedom."

Bob Brooks



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