About the project

In summer of 2022, the remains of 15 Hessian soldiers were discovered during a community dig day at Gloucester County’s Red Bank Battlefield Park in National Park. The park is the site of a landmark Revolutionary War battle between Patriot forces and Hessians fighting for the British crown.

The outnumbered-but-emboldened Patriots, a fully integrated force of white and Black soldiers fighting side by side for independence, turned back the Hessians in what Rowan University Public Historian Jen Janofsky calls “the greatest upset of the American Revolution.”

A national team of researchers is analyzing the remains and conducting research with the hope that one or more of the Hessian soldiers can be identified.