During the American Revolution, Winchester, Virginia, and the surrounding countryside became a detention center for thousands of British and German prisoners of war. It served as a prison camp from 1776-1783......In September of 1777 twenty Pennsylvania Quakers arrived at Winchester, arrested in Philadelphia as "prisoners of war", but the prisoners most remembered were the so-called "Hessians" captured at the battles of Trenton, Saratoga and Yorktown....Nearly 30,000 Germans came across the Atlantic during the war years, 17,000 of whom were from the Landgraviate of Hessen-Kassel and 2,400 from the territory of Hessen-Hanau. The first group of German Prisoners to arrive in Winchester were some of the 1,000 Hessians captured at Trenton, New Jersey on December 26, 1776. They had spent the following winter and spring at Lancaster, PA. On August 15, 1777 the Hessians marched to Lebanon and Carlisle where conditions became so crowded, they ordered about 300 to proceed to Winchester. On September 30, in Winchester they were drawn up and parceled out to the country people to work. In the Spring of 1778 local farmers hired many of the Germans to work on their farms. Almost every Hessian captured at Trenton and sent to Virginia returned to his regiment when exchanged in 1778. We will note here that the Hessian Jacob was taken prisoner of war in October 1777 and ransomed in May of 1778. Nikolas deserted to the enemy ALSO in October of 1777.