This spring, a team of archaeologists and volunteers began diligently digging into the history of Fort Mercer, a Revolutionary War fortification on the Delaware River that is now the heart of the Park Red Bank Battlefield in National Park, NJ
During the war, Continental Army soldiers were stationed at the fort to prevent the British and their Hessian mercenary allies from resupplying troops in nearby Philadelphia. On October 22, 1777, the army repelled a massive attack by Hessian forces. Little known today, the Battle of the Red Bank was brief and fierce, marking one of the worst defeats suffered by the Hessians in the war.
Archaeologists have focused on excavating a trench that was used to defend the fortress in battle. Wade Catts, principal archaeologist with South River Heritage Consulting in Newark, Del. Mr. Catts led the excavation with Jennifer Janofsky, the park’s director and a historian at Rowan University in Glassboro, NJ
Instead, at around 2pm on June 26, the last day of field work, the team found a leg bone; they quickly determined that it belonged to one of the attacking Hessians. This is the first human bone found at the site since 1904, when a new fence was built at the battlefield. Over the next few weeks, the team recovered the remains of 14 individuals, promising to give scientists a detailed look at military life and death during that era. “I don’t really think we’re going to have mass burials,” Mr. Catts said.
On the day of the attack in 1777, the Hessians certainly thought so. The force of 2,300 mercenaries was led by Colonel Carl Emil Ulrich von Donop, a courageous leader with a fiery temper, according to letters written by his officers. The fort was defended by only 534 soldiers, including members of the Virginia Sixth Regiment and the New Jersey militia, as well as members of the First and Second Rhode Island Regiments, two of the military units. the nation’s first synthesis. Forty-eight American soldiers were black; the regiments also included Native Americans of the Narragansetts.
Colonel von Donop believes in victory. Fort Mercer “will be Fort Donop or I will die,” he wrote to General William Howe, commander of British forces. When the Hessians arrived at the fortress, Colonel von Donop sent an officer to urge the Americans to surrender. “The King of England ordered his rebellious subjects to lay down their weapons,” the request states. “If they fight, no quarter will be awarded.”
The American commander, Colonel Christopher Greene, immediately replied: The Americans accepted the challenge, and neither side should be tilted. Fighting began at 4 p.m. From the river, 13 Pennsylvania Navy bases immediately bombarded the Hessians with cannon fire, and the soldiers inside Fort Mercer opened the door with muskets and 14 guns. their own cannon. Two battalions and a regiment of Hessian soldiers advanced across the dam. Their attack was slowed by trees that had been cut down; The branches were sharpened and lined up around the fortress. The battle lasted only 75 minutes; By the time it was over, 377 Hessian soldiers – and only 14 Americans – had died.
The horror of that afternoon was soon evident to the archaeologists. From an excavation pit 10 feet wide, 30 feet long and 1.5 feet deep, they recovered 14 skulls and several other human skeletons. Mr. Catts believed that the soldiers belonged to the von Mirbach Regiment and that they were at the heart of the Hessian formation during the attack. Mr. Catts said injuries to one soldier included “a musket bullet in the lower part of his back, above his pelvis; a lead canister was shot in the middle of his back, where he no longer had his thoracic vertebrae; and then an iron grape an inch and a half long that appears to have severed his left arm. “
Dr. Janofsky noted that ships in the river were firing chains and firing at Hessians, ammunition designed to destroy a ship’s rig. “These people have been attacked by all sorts of things,” said Mr. “What a horrible place this would be.”
According to the accounts of the surviving Hessian officers, most of the wounded were left on the battlefield: The Hessians did not bring a chariot to carry them, and the American soldiers, fearing another attack, remained inside. fortress. “It is with great pain that I have lost so many good people, I cannot describe and I have not recovered from it yet,” wrote Lieutenant Colonel Ludwig Johann Adolph von Wurmb, who took part in the assault, a few days later. . . “The tragedy of our poor wounded here, America cannot be described without tears, and those left with the enemy with no aid.”
That night, a group of American soldiers ventured out to repair some defensive points. A voice resounded from the battlefield: “Whoever you are, get me out of here.” It was Colonel von Donop who was shot in the hip.
According to Captain Thomas Antoine Mauduit du Plessis, the French engineer leading the group, an American soldier shouted: “Now, do you agree that there will be no penis?” The colonel replied, “I am in your hands. You may have your revenge.” The Americans took him into the fortress and cared for him until his death a week later.
The remains of the wounded Hessian were left where they lay until the next day, when American soldiers were tasked with burying the dead. The ditch in front of the fortress could have been an easy place to dispose of bodies, Dr. Janofsky said. “Are we looking at someone who’s been shot, died, and buried?” she speaks. “Or are we looking at what the burial party did on October 23, 1777, essentially throwing the bodies in a convenient pit?”
The first human bone found, a femur, was found in the excavation pit by Joe Reilly, a volunteer and self-described history nerd, and Wayne Wilson, another volunteer with the excavation company. . As soon as it surfaced, all digging stopped – standard procedure when it comes to finding human bones. Anna Delaney, a forensic anthropologist for the New Jersey State Police, was called in, and she determined that the femur did not belong to a person who had died recently. She said that its severely damaged state made that clear.
Over the following weeks, Ms. Delaney helped remove all the remains of humans from the site and preserve them in her lab, where they will be analyzed and hopefully will begin to reveal details. details about the lives of soldiers. She and Thomas Crist, a forensic anthropologist at Utica University who had worked on remains during the Revolutionary War, planned to study the chemical composition of the bones. Certain isotopes are stable, and the presence of trace elements, can help determine where a person grows up and what a person’s diet and health will be like later in life.
Ms Delaney and Dr Crist also hope to be able to recover DNA from bones and blood stains on some of the artifacts. Gene analysis could allow researchers to reconstruct the family tree of soldiers and learn their identity, Ms. Delaney said: “To be able to give back the name to one of these soldiers, return it. giving their family something, I think that’s actually the most enjoyable part of the whole process. “Once the analysis is complete, the bones will be buried in an unspecified location.
Some of the artifacts recovered from the site tell their own stories. A row of buttons was found, laid out as if they were on top of a coat that had been thrown into a trench and then rotted. The buttons match the description of the buttons on the uniforms of the von Mirbach Regiment, Dr. Janofsky said. She suspects that the jacket may have been used to transport severed body parts down the trench.
Another fascinating artifact found at the site was a British gold coin, worth about a month’s salary for an ordinary soldier, which Mr. Catts suggested may have belonged to Lieutenant Colonel Ernst Rudolf von Schieck, who commanded the Hessian regiment and died in the battle of Go.
For Dr. Janofsky, the human remains add bitterness to the battle’s story. Among the dead was a man between 17 and 19 years old, the same age as many of her history students. “Very few of us have witnessed the violence of the battlefield, and that is what we have been observing over the past months,” she said. “I feel like we have a responsibility to help the visitor make sense of that moment.”
