I knew that families came with the British and German soldiers who occupied Aquidneck Island. What I didn’t realize was that there would be families living at the Butts Hill fortifications. Walter Schroder’s book “The Hessian Occupation of Newport and Rhode Island 1776-1779” provides an interesting glimpse of this family life. Most of the German troops were Protestants and they brought their chaplains with the army. Schroder cites records of the Rev. G.C. Coster who was chaplain of two Hessian regiments. Coster lists several births, baptisms and infant deaths recorded at the Windmill Hill encampment (Butts Hill). That is proof that the families of the soldiers came and stayed with them even on their field assignments to North Portsmouth.

Schiffer, J. C. Plan von Rhode Island, und deren dem comando des Herrn General Majors Presgott inf dies-malig befundlichen campements. [1777] Map. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/75690704/.

Schroder, Walter. The Hessian Occupation of Newport and Rhode Island 1776-1779. Westminster, Maryland, Heritage Books, 2005.

Coster, G.C. Hessian Soldiers in the American Revolution: Records of their marriages and baptisms of their children in American, performed by the Rev. G.C. Coster, 1776-1783, Chaplain of two Hessian Regiments. Edited and translated by Marie Dicktore. Cincinnati: C.J. Krehbiel Co. 1959.