I represent Johann Jakob Clementz. I was a drummer in the 4th company of the 3rd Waldeck Regiment. I was born April 26, 1760 in Helson, Waldeck Province. I was Evangelical (which means “Protestant,” in this context). My parents were Johannes and Maria Christiana Neuschaefer Clementz. We were hired by the British from Waldeck Prince Frederick Karl Augustus to assist them in fighting the American rebels in the Revolutionary War. We reached North America in 1776. After two years of heavy action we were sent to Pensacola, along with the provincial loyalist forces of Maryland and Pennsylvania. In early January 1781, a few months after the Spanish had captured Mobile, General Campbell sent a group of Waldeckers, Maryland and Pennsylvania Loyalists, and indigenous warriors to The Village (on the eastern shore near the head of Mobile Bay) in an attempted counterattack against the Spanish. The attack ended in defeat and we retreated back to Pensacola. After the surrender, we were sent by the Spanish to New York, on our honor not to fight against the Spanish again until we were exchanged. I boarded the Santa Rosalia on Mary 20, 1781 to begin that voyage. We lived in encampments at New Town on Long Island. The Waldeckers resumed duty in July of 1782, and a year later, in July of 1783, I and the Waldeck Regiment, 418 men and women and 13 children, left New York to return to Europe. I returned to Germany with the Regiment in 1783 and transferred to the 5th Waldeck Battalion. in 1788 I married Maria Elizabeth Bauer and we had a daughter, Catherina, born that same year. I died February 25, 1805.
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