Tracing Philip Schaeffer and Elizabeth Schaeffer III

Some further evidence has come to light about Philip Schaeffer. Unfortunately none of it is particularly conclusive so the reader should be aware that whatever tentative conclusions I have made about him and his daughter Elizabeth in this post are more based on assumptions than firm historical evidence. This is partly due to the contradictory nature of some of that evidence.

A Phillipe Scheffer is listed as a sergeant in the company of Captain Germann, a Hanau company mustered at Njimegen on 23 March, 1776. [Bruce E. Burgoyne (trans.) Hesse-Hanau order Books, a Diary and Rosters. Heritage Books, 2006, p. 238.] If this Scheffer is our Philip Schaeffer, a possibility as Scheffer is a variant spelling of Schaeffer in the 18th century Hessian records, it means he possibly served in Canada from about mid-1776. At this stage of my research into the Schaeffers this is inconclusive, but if so, it may mean he served at Saratoga in 1777 and was captured there after Burgoyne's defeat there later that year. If that is the case he would have ended up a prisoner in Virginia, and still been a prisoner when he married, in which case Elizabeth Schaeffer may have been born in an American prison camp, assuming his wife, not yet identified, was with him. These conclusions are all based on as yet non-evidential assumptions which have yet to be tested.

Another (or the same) Philipp Schaeffer is listed as a second lieutenant in the Free Battalion of Hesse Hanau 1782, 1783, enlisting on January 15, 1781. [Max von Eelking, The German Allied Troops in the North American War of Independence, 1776-1783, (trans. J. G. Rosengarten), Albany, NY. 1893, p. 349] in which case Schaeffer came late to the war and his daughter Elizabeth was born probably near Frankfurt probably in 1780. [Michael Flynn, The second Fleet. Britain's Grim Convict Armada of 1790,North Sydney, 2001, p. 581].

On the other hand, there is clear evidence that some Hesse-Hanau troops did not depart for North America until after those regiments that left in 1776, probably in early 1777. These Hessians belonged to a Jaeger Corps, as did Schaeffer and they served first in New Jersey, then in the Philadelphia campaign. [von Eelking, op. cit.,pp. 100-105.] Schaeffer may well have been with this group. If so, he would have been part of the British occupation force in Charleston, South Carolina in 1780, and Elizabeth could have been born in Charleston, assumimg Schaeffer was accompanied by his wife.