Nicholas Haussegger (original) (raw)

Nicholas Haussegger (1729 – July 1786) was a native of Bern, Switzerland who arrived in the British Colonies in North America about 1744 as a subaltern officer in the British army during the French and Indian War. After the war he purchased a farm in Lebanon county and became a leader in the local Pennsylvania German community. At the beginning of the American Revolutionary War Haussegger joined the 4th Pennsylvania Battalion as a field officer. He was placed in command of the German Battalion, a unit of ethnic Germans from Pennsylvania and Maryland, on July 17, 1776. He led his battalion at Trenton in late December 1776. A week later, he was taken prisoner at Assunpink Creek and investigated over allegations of desertion and attempting to persuade American prisoners-of-war to join the Bri