"German Battalion at Trenton" Topic

I have found sources which say they are or were part of the 8th Massachusetts. Osprey shows it as the Pennsylvania German Regiment. Osprey does not show the 8th Mass. at Trenton.

Nafziger calls the unit the "German Battalion". Both Nafzigler and Osprey put them in Fermoy's Brigade, Greene's Division. Neither mentions the 8th Mass.

Just want to know which it should be. I have the feeling they are two separate units.

I believe the German Regiment was a PA/MD unit.

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Here is the re-enactment unit's FB page, complete with unit history on the right hand side

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Thanks. I think I meant the 8th Maryland not the 8th Mass.

I am not on FB but maybe they have a website.

Wikipedia (yeah, I know) calls it the 8th Maryland.
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The German Battalion, sometimes known as the 8th Maryland Regiment (there were seven Maryland regiments in the Maryland Line) was organized between 6 July and 25 September 1776 with five Pennsylvania companies and four Maryland companies. The regiment was assigned at various times to the Maryland Brigade, the 1st Virginia Brigade, the New Jersey Brigade, and Hand's Brigade and was disbanded on 1 January 1781

The battalion did serve at Trenton and Princeton.

See The Continental Army by Robert Wright, 320. The unit is listed as an 'extra regiment.'

That helps. Thanks Brechtel198!

Further to the above, the German Battalion was almost certainly the first Continental unit to enlist men for three years, when it was raised in June 1776. When it was disbanded in 1781, many of its men went to Hazen's 2nd Canadian Regt; prior to that, it also contributed men to the "Maryland Corps" of 3 companies, stationed at Fort Pitt. I've checked Katcher, and unfortunately, there is no record of any official uniform prior to two deserters both wearing "white hunting shirts" in early- and mid-1778.

Virginia and North Carolina Continental regiments also went to three year enlistments in 1776, but I don't know whether that was before or after the Germans. Also IIRC the Maryland line did not reach 7 battalions until the 1777 reorganization, so the alternate 8th Maryland name would not have been used at Trenton.