This week, I want to talk about Leopold Zindle, my 6th great-grandfather, a Hessian soldier who was taken as a prisoner of war by General Washington’s troops during the Battle of Paulus Hook in August 1779.
To get to Leopold, we go through one of My Sixteen, John Jackson Tuttle:
On December 19, 2014, I posted “Me No Go; Me Die First,” sharing a fascinating story about how Leopold came to reside in Morris County, New Jersey, after the end of the Revolutionary War.
I found Leopold’s story fascinating because if you go up my paternal line, my 5th great-grandfather, James Callin, was serving in the Continental Army that Leopold was hired to defeat. James was not in a unit that participated in the attack on Paulus Hook and I don’t believe his unit ever fought Leopold’s on any other battlefield. He was probably on his way South to join the Siege of Charleston by the time the Paulus Hook attack took place, but being able to place two ancestors on opposite sides of such a famous conflict still creates some interesting dramatic possibilities.
The story I learned about Leopold was even more dramatic - at least, the first version I encountered was:
The object of General Washington’s visit to Mount Hope was partly to arrange with [John Jacob] Faesch about taking some Hessian prisoners to board for their work in chopping wood in Faesch’s coaling job; at least we know that Faesch took 250 of these prisoners from General Washington, and erected five log houses for them. At the close of the war the British had a certain number of days to gather up these hired soldiers, as they were required to pay for every one they did not return to the old country. Among the 250 men was Leopold Zindle.
When the British officer visited Mt. Hope for the purpose of getting these men he commanded Zindle to go with him. Zindle replied, "Me no go; me can die first." This so aroused the officer that he drew his sword and struck Zindle in the breast, breaking the weapon in three pieces -- one remaining in Zindle's body, one in the officers hand and one falling to the ground. Zindle still persisted in saying "Me no go, me die first." This occurred in the presence of a large crowd, and seeing the resistance which Zindle made, and the many friends he had, the officer was obliged to retreat to save his own life. Zindle ended his days at Mt. Hope about 1820, a very old man. William F. Wiggins, who relates this incident, knew him very well, and was at his funeral.
Halsey, Edmund D., “History of Morris County, New Jersey…”, W.W. Munsell & Co., New York, 1882, page 337.
There are a lot of compelling elements in this story that appeal to an American descendant.
The comeuppance of a haughty British officer.
The image of the townspeople of Mount Hope embracing Leopold, a former enemy, in defiance of the king’s representative.
The personal friend who fondly remembered Leopold sharing the story directly with the historian.
This story was republished in 1998 in the Morristown “Daily Record” as part of a piece celebrating “treasures from the pages of Morris history,” quoting parts directly, and emphasizing those points I just mentioned. But some details are missing, of course, and we wouldn’t be doing a proper job of documenting Leopold’s life if we didn’t look for primary source documents that might enhance what we know about this story.
There are some records of muster rolls for the Hessian troops. Several other researchers have saved the text of a 1998 post from a now-defunct genealogy forum that asked about Leopold’s story. The response refers to the “HETRINA volumes” and the “Schwalm journal” - referring to original records that were (at the time) held by the Johannes Schwalm Historical Association (JSHA) in Pennsauken, New Jersey. A researcher named John Helmut Merz relayed the contents of those sources and shared his analysis and insights.
I have not succeeded in acquiring access to those original documents, but I have been able to confirm that they exist, at least. For now, I am taking Mr. Merz’s word that they say what he claims, but some future trips to visit the JSHA archives at their home in Lancaster, PA, may be necessary.
These sources do support the basic facts that a man whose full name was probably Johann Leopold Zuendel, listing his birthplace as “Essingen or Oessingen, old postal code D6741,”1 enlisted in the Hesse-Kassel Regt. Erbprinz, 1. Comp., and was reported on the unit’s muster roll in August 1779. The prisoner lists show a Leopold Zindell from the Kassel Regt. Erbprinz, including a remark saying “Captured at Paulus Hook 8-20-79.”
But it turns out that exciting story didn’t happen quite the way it did in Halsey’s book or the subsequent newspaper item. There are a couple of more recent publications, one from 2008 and one from 2016, which analyze some primary sources that tell a very different version of Leopold’s story.
The first thing a modern reader needs to understand is what being a “prisoner of war” meant during the American Revolution.
In those early years of the war, American revolutionaries at the local level had developed the practice to allow both common British and German prisoners of war to work for craftsmen, farmers, manufacturers, and revolutionary authorities. Essentially, captivity for common soldiers in the period between 1776 and 1782 came to mean labor outide of their places of imprisonment rather than confinement in some kind of prison or barracks. Work gave British and German prisoners of war an opportunity to earn additional pay and live outside the cramped barracks. Local communities were glad to have a large reservoir of potential laborers at their disposal.
- Krebs, Daniel, "German Captives in the American War of Independence", from Krieg, Militär und Migration in der Frühen Neuzeit. Germany, Lit, 2008; pg. 121.
According to Krebs, “John Jacob Faesch from Mount Hope, New Jersey, also requested German prisoners of war as laborers. On April 29, 1782, he received thirty-five men from [Thomas] Bradford [Commissary of Prisoners in Philadelphia] and could put his furnace into blast. Among the soldiers were...two men from the Hesse-Cassel Regiment Prince Hereditary captured at Paulus Hook in 1779...”
Leopold was one of those two men, as confirmed by the primary sources in the JSHA collection. So, the arrangement was that Faesch would pay for the room and board for his 35 POWs, pay them a generous wage, and then turn around and invoice the Continental government for housing their prisoners for them.
A month after Leopold and his fellow prisoners arrived at Faesch’s factory, however, the Continental authorities instituted a new set of policies that led to the showdown described in Leopold’s story.
But the real story is very different from the one I found in 2014.
If you’re not already subscribed, you can sign up now and learn the real story next week:
I had to run to the r/Genealogy group on Reddit to ask for help with the postal code; apparently, Mr. Merz added it to clarify which Essingen he thought it was - which can be looked up using this site.
Such an amazing story, thank you, Tad.