[Verginius Rufus]

There were a lot of mercenary soldiers in earlier centuries (the Hessians sent to America by George III were nothing new--and some of them were from other places than Hesse). Perhaps some men from Scotland signed on as mercenaries in the Thirty Years' War (which England and Scotland stayed out of) and spent time in Germany.

I read something a few years back about a man in England who discovered his paternal ancestry came from a place in Croatia where the same surname is still found--evidently he had an ancestor from there who became a mercenary in one of the wars and eventually settled in England.

[gleeaikin]

My father, when we lived in NJ told me about a group of people living in the NJ, NY, PA border area (the hills) who were called “Jackson’s Whites”. He said they were a mixture of run away Negros, Indians, and deserting Hessians from during the American Revolution.