Instructor: Dr. Arthur Turfa holds MAs in German and History, has taught over 25 years on secondary and post-secondary levels, and has served two bilingual (English-German) Lutheran congregations. A native Pennsylvanian, he has lived in South Carolina for 20 years, most of them in the Dutch Fork. Description: In 1775, Germans were the largest non-English group of European ancestry. The 100,000 German speakers, immigrant and Colonial-born, constituted around 5% of the European-ancestry population. While concentrated in the Mid-Atlantic region, there were significant communities in the Carolinas. The Revolution saw Germans on both sides and some remained neutral, primarily for religious reasons. We examine the motivations for the choices made, look at several key figures, and the 15,000 Hessian soldiers recruited as mercenaries.