I represent Johann Bartholomeus Meuser. I was a private in the 3rd Company, 3rd Waldeck Regiment. I was born in April 1758 in Anraff, Waldeck Province. I was Evangelical ( which, in this context, means “Protestant”) and I stood 5′ 5″ tall – right about average for the men in my regiment. My parents were Johannes and Katherina Elisabeth Melwig Meuser, and they were farmers. 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. We reached North America in 1776. I was taken prisoner in New Jersey on January 5, 1777 and returned to my regiment in August 1778. 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. The attempt was not without loss of life, including the Waldeck commander. I myself was wounded. 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. We lived in encampments at New Town on Long Island. 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.
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