Anyone who has ever visited the Dyckman Farmhouse Museum has surely taken a peek at the Hessian hut next to the garden behind the main house.
But who were these mysterious Hessians, where did they come from and where did they go?
Strictly speaking, Hessians were German military conscripts. Definitely not volunteers, these unfortunate soldiers had been forced into the military by Prince Frederick II. Many of the soldiers were old and weak, some were criminals and most had no military experience at all. So Frederick devised a plan. 
He sold his ragtag group of conscripts to the British Army who themselves were in desperate need of troops to defend against the Revolution in the American colonies. This was not an enviable position for the average Hessian foot-soldier, about half of whom hailed from the German principality of Hesse-Cassel. All told, some 30,000 Hessians were sold into military service.
While there were some crack units, most of the Hessians, who made up about a quarter of the British fighting force in America, were lambs for the slaughter. Fighting mainly for a meager daily food ration, Hessian troops fought in nearly every battle of the Revolution. Their presence was certainly felt in Inwood.
During the British occupation of Manhattan, there was an encampment containing more than sixty huts occupied by Hessian troops between 201st and 204th Streets along Payson Avenue. The camp was discovered in 1914 by local archeologist and historian Reginald Bolton after a series of digs around the neighborhood.
In 1915, Bolton moved and reconstructed one of the huts on the site of the Dyckman Farmhouse. The hut stands today much as it must have when it was constructed so many years ago. Only the timber roof is of “modern” design.
Bolton also found articles of daily Hessian life including bottles, belt buckles, pipes and buttons. Some of these artifacts are on public display in the relic room inside the farmhouse.
So where did the Hessians go?
Given the miserable living conditions and the guerilla tactics of the American fighting forces, many of the Hessian troops found themselves in unmarked graves. The same conditions also ensured the desertion of a number of Hessians to a new way of life here in America. In fact, some 5,000 surviving Hessian mercenaries were banned reentry to Germany because they were deemed physically unfit or because they had criminal pasts. Many of the remaining Hessians settled comfortably into their new home. It was, after all, a nation of immigrants.
Decades after the Revolutionary War, Washington Irving immortalized the plight of the Hessian conscript in his frightening tale “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” In Irving’s ghost story, the Headless Horseman is, “the ghost of a Hessian trooper, whose head had been carried away by a cannonball, in some nameless battle during the Revolutionary War.”
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Thanks for your help!! I needed it for school, so I’ll cite this now.
I do Family History and have been told my GG Grandfather was a Hessian. I understand that after England lost the war – they (England) offered some of these troops property in New Brunswick for their service. This is where my GG Grandfather went.
If anyone knows where there maybe a record of names of these soldiers and where they came from – I would love to know.
My GG Grandfather was a Hessian soldier who was captured at Battle of Yorktown and
was a prisoner until the end of the war. He did not return to Germany, but stayed here
and settled in the Shannondoah Valley of Virginia. Most of them were from the Hesse-
Kassel area of Germany. There are lists at the Bureau of Archives of those men. We have
been over to this area in Germany, it is a little difficult to get info there unless you are
fluent in German. We do geneology and have obtained quite a lot of information on my
ancestor here in the US but more difficult from overseas. Good luck on obtaining info
(or maybe you have already obtained what you were looking for)
I needed this for school thanks for help