I represent Christian Friedrich Pentzel I was a Major of the 3rd Waldeck Regiment. I was born on March 21, 1733 in Helson, Waldeck Province. My parents were Georg Samuel and Catherine Barbara Wurffbain Pentzel. I was married and my religion was Lutheran. I spoke several languages and was apparently a skilled artist. The 3rd Waldeck Regiment was hired by the British from Waldeck Prince Frederick Karl Augustus to assist them in fighting the American rebels in the Revolutionary War. I commanded the 4th company on the Benjamin as a captin when we sailed to 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. I was promoted to major in April 1779. From February to April 1780, I escorted Spanish prisoners from Pensacola to New Orleans aboard the Christiana under a flag of truce. In November 1780, I was sent with 50 men of the Waldeck regiment to command the Royal Navy Redoubt, an artillery position on what the British called The Cliffs or the Red Cliffs, and what the Spanish would call Barrancas. After the surrender in May 1781, we were sent to New York, on our honor not to fight against the Spanish again until we were exchanged. I boarded the Santa Rosalia with my batman (military servant) on May 29, 1781 to make that voyage. The Waldeckers resumed duty in July of 1782. 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. On September 23, 1783 aboard ship on the Weser River south of Bremen – on my way home from the war – I died from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Sources: 26, 38, 54