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Individual Record
Name
Surname:
Buttner
Given Name:
Johann Carl
Variant Surname Spellings:
Buettner, Büttner
Soundex Code:
B356
Birth, Christening and Other Information
Gender:
Male
Nation:
[Germany]
Occupation(s):
Barber Surgeon
Orphan:
Unknown
Position in Parent's Family:
Unknown
Landowner:
Unknown
Literate:
Unknown
Convict:
Unknown
Port of Departure
Town:
Rotterdam
County:
Zuid-Holland
Nation:
Netherlands
Place of Arrival
Town:
Philadelphia
County:
Philadelphia
Colony:
Pennsylvania
Ship:
Sally
Length of Indenture
Year of Indenture:
1773
Place of Indenture
Colony:
Pennsylvania
Research Notes
Comments:
"Büttner was an optimist who viewed life as a glass half full, and his life would make a good plot for a mini-series, Grubb said. After some years as a servant, even running away one time, he became a soldier during the Revolutionary War, changing sides as fate directed from being a revolutionary to a Hessian soldier and back again, even playing dead a few times when the occasion demanded. He became a barber surgeon and eventually returned with the Hessians to Germany and his family, married and became quite prosperous." (1) "How the servant himself felt about going to war is difficult to ascertain because first hand testimony is scarce. Johann Carl Buettner, an indentured servant and a fledgling medical surgeon, recalled in his Narrative that he had wandered into a Lutheran church in Philadelphia and heard Major Van Ortendorff, a French and Indian War veteran, encourage the male members of the congregation to join the American army using thirteen acres of free land as an inducement. After receiving twenty dollars, Buettner enlisted and Abraham Eldrige his master, a militia lieutenant himself, 'was very happy on the following day, when he saw me in the blue uniform with green collar and cuffs, and wished me good luck in my new profession.' Eldrige demanded Buettner pay him 'every month for twenty months one pound sterling' and the servant 'consented.' Buettner claimed the 'service of this corps was very hard.' He lived in huts, not tents, had stale beef, stole cattle to eat, and 'patrolled all night long.' Six months later Buettner escaped, joined the Hessian troops, divulged valuable military information and swore allegiance to King George the Third." (3)
Source Citations:
(1) Sue Moncure, "'Souls for Sale,' Memoirs of Early German Immigrants," UDaily, 10 Nov 2006, http://www.udel.edu/PR/UDaily/2007/nov/souls111006.html; (2) Susan E. Klepp, Farley Grubb, Anne Pfaelzer de Ortiz, Souls for Sale: Two German Redemptioners Come to Revolutionary America; The Life Stories of John Frederick Whitehead and Johann Carl Buttner (University Park, Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press, 2006); (3) Daniel Meaders, Dead or Alive: Fugitive Slaves and White Indentured Servants before 1830 (New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1993), 195, quoting Johann Carl Buettner, Narrative of John Carl Buettner in the American Revolution (New York, 1915), 39-48; (4) Clifford Lindsey Alderman, Colonists for Sale: The Story of Indentured Servants in America (New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1975), 39-40, 144-145.