I chose to feature Hessians in today’s post for English Historical Fiction Authors to better understand one of my ancestors, Johann Gebel.
He had a decision to make, one that affected the family for generations: does he stay with the Hessian army or does he desert and forsake his home and his parents across the Atlantic?
We don’t know a lot about Johann. Even the spelling of his name varies. Nor is there direct evidence that he was a Hessian soldier, but circumstances point to his service in this army of conscripts who faced harsh discipline. Johann was born February 11, 1756, in Waldeck, one of the six principalities to rent troops to the British. He was 20 when America declared its independence. If he was healthy and “expendable,” he was a prime candidate for the army.
According to family lore, Johann did not want to fight. Possibly, he saw this as a war among foreigners, and it had nothing to with him or the defense of his home and country.
There are variations in what happens next. He was shipped across the Atlantic by himself, or he was one of three brothers who deserted, or he was one of seven brothers who split up to fight for the Americans. The first story is most plausible to me. He somehow wound up in Havana as a prisoner of war and deserted the Hessian army.
Maybe the promise of freedom lured him. He would be out of jail and free of the beatings in the military. Plus, he had a shot of being a respectable citizen rather than an expendable conscript.
After the war ended in 1783, he was living in the States and married Elizabeth Bens Martzall (or Marzell), perhaps in 1789. They had a son, John Gable, six years later; the anglicized version of the name shows they were assimilating to the young country. Johann moved around in Pennsylvania a few times before finally settling in 1803 in Warwick Township in Lancaster County. He would remain there until his death at age 96 in 1852.
By Richard Knötel (January 12, 1857–April 26, 1914) (Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
Very interesting. I love this period of time. I have my ancesters back to around the 1760s but seem to be at a stopping point there. Marilyn Witt
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Healthy and expendable. I just love it when people pull no punches. That’s the reality …
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Interesting. . There is still a camp in Hanau am Maine and a mural showing Hessians soldiers going off to fight for the British in one of the wars. I know they were part of the Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. The Hessian boot was named for those soldiers.. Wikipedia has a page on Waldeck the state. the town is even more confusing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldeck_(state)
I have probably passed through there and not even known it.
I can’t track my German ancestors back so far and have a hard time even discovering from which part of Germany my grandparents emigrated.
I think many decided not to go back once they were in North America. There was so much land available– land without overlords, land free for the taking — or so it seemed. I would desert too, if my country treated me like a library book to be loaned out to anyone. Worse, actually, because most library books aren’t at risk of being shot or stuck with a bayonet.
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