Jaeger Rifles with Revolutionary war provenace

[richardn]

What does anyone know about Jaegers that can be traced to the mercenary corp. - are they rare? collectable? I have seen and handled a lot of civilian or Royal jaegers but military jaegers seem to bring their own level of excitement and interest.

Richard Nicholas

[boman]

 
     The one I'm aware of(which doesn't say much because I haven't done enough research) is in the West Point museum and is attributed to the Hesse Cassel  Jaegers.  It was made by a T. W. Pistor.  I am currently about 75% finished with two replicas of this Jaeger using Rifle Shop parts. 
     Apparently someone came up with a Anspach-Bayreuth example also.  It is almost identical the the above mentioned except for the lock according to the Rifle Shoppe.

One thing I have learned from a lot of reading is that there weren't that many actual Jaeger's in North America during the Revolution which could account for the lack of available rifles to study.

Of the 30,067 German mercenaries that came over only 1066 are documented as Jaeger's.  821 with Hesse Cassel and 245 with Anspach - Bayreuth.  The rest of the contingent  were  Hessians(Infantry) with a smattering of artillery.

[Stophel]

The Hessian soldiers were not mercenaries.  Their ruler was.  They were often pressed into service (In times of war, German "recruiters" would roam around the countryside searching for suitable candidates with a dog and two pistols!).  Many were professional soldiers, and many were just patriots, doing what they saw was their duty to their country.  To my knowledge, there were no Freikorps (who were mercenaries) involved in the Revolution.

[boman]

  Stophel is correct in the modern sense.  The German royalty received all the money from England for the use of their troops.

  I've read where Jaegers often supplied their own weapons which also could account for lack of military examples.
  Common sense tells me that there are surviving specimens in Germany in museums and such but no one over here has done any serious research in that direction as far as I know?

[Randy Hedden]

They were often pressed into service (In times of war, German "recruiters" would roam around the countryside searching for suitable candidates with a dog and two pistols!). 

Many men pressed into service by the German State's recruiters  were not even German. The recruiters had quotas to make so they often just grabbed up any man they could get their hands on.

Randy Hedden

[lexington1]

Here is an interesting site with some Jaeger info and lots of links:

http://www.jaegerkorps.org/Reading.html

[Stophel]

The military contract rifles pretty much follow the Prussian pattern (just like most everything else).  Probably, the Hessians utilized the same contractors.  Some were even made in Belgium.

Just looking at the guns by themselves (such as the Pistor gun), they're pretty typical north German rifles, stylistically from the first half of the 18th century (they pretty much maintained this basic style for military guns even into the 19th century).

[woodsrunner]

The rifle shown on Mel Hankla's "American Historic Services" website called the "Free Born" rifle, is supposed to have probably been a damaged battlefield pickup that was refitted with a Jaeger barrel by a Hessian. The piece ended up in posession of a British officer who took it back to England where it stayed until about 1975 when it was returned to the USA by a recluse collector. The Yaeger barrel was replaced with a longrifle barrel once it came back IIRC. Earl Lanning and Tom Patton know the particulars on the Yaeger barrel replacement.

[keweenaw]

In the serious collecting world it's a generally good idea to not publicly list the owners of particular rifles.  They're welcome to list themselves as owners if they wish, but others shouldn't list their names.

Tom