Enemy, Deserter, Patriot

EARTHENHOUSE: The Earthenhouse connection is purely collateral. Jacob Cawby, brother to Martin Sr. and son of immigrant John Cawby, married Christina Earthenhouse in 1834. Both were in their 50s. It is Christina's father who is the subject of this post. Conrad Earthenhouse's story is an interesting adventure!

Conrad Earthenhouse was born in Schoningen, Germany in May of 1755 according to his pension file. An alternate site of Lippoldshausen, Niedersachsen [Lower Saxony], Germany was provided in an e-mail correspondence with John Merz, who also noted that Earthenhouse was originally Bodenhausen. Lippoldshausen is east of Munden / Waser in Lower Saxony. He came to America in 1776 in the ranks of the Lossberg Regiment of Hessian soldiers hired by the British to fight the Colonists. Another soldier, Jacob Zike [Zeuch], sailed for America on the same ship and the two became close friends. Zike was a private in the Erbprinz Regiment from Kassel. He enlisted at Niederzuenzebach, a village near Eschwege.

The Lossberg Regiment saw duty in New York at Long Island and Trenton, among other places until the spring of 1779, when the troops were sent to Virginia. The Hessian troops were sent as support for the arrival of Commodore Collier on the James River. Shortly thereafter Bodenhausen and Zeuch deserted.

Both men made their way overland to Hanover Co., Virginia, where they joined the ranks of the American forces under General Edward Stevens in 1780. Stevens brigade joined the Delaware and Maryland troops in marching to Charleston, South Carolina. In the summer they were joined by North Carolina troops at Deep River and were subsequently attacked by the British regulars under Lord General Cornwallis at the Battle of Camden in August. Conrad was in the thick of the fighting only six months into his service with the Continentals.

General Nathanael Greene, Washington's second in command, arrived in North Carolina to take charge of the army. The Battle of Cowpens followed, in which Daniel Morgan's militia lured the British Regulars into the ranks of the Continental Army and defeat.

Afterwards, Morgan led the troops back into Virginia before taking part in the Battle of Guilford Courthouse. Three months of service in lower Virginia followed before the troops headed for Yorktown and the clinching victory in the service of Washington and Lafayette at Cornwallis' surrender.

Earthenhouse then served at Redstone, Virginia [actually western Pennsylvania] under Major Hickman fighting Indians and about a year on the frontier west of Hagerstown, Maryland.

By war's end Conrad Earthenhouse had married and fathered, at least, a son, John. The Earthenhouse and Zike families settled in Washington Co., Maryland, where they appeared on the Census in 1790. The families had moved to Jessamine Co., Kentucky by 1801, when "Koonrad Earthenhouse" appeared on the August 13 Tax Roll. He was assessed for 106 acres on Jessamine Creek in 1804. In 1810, Conrad, Jacob 'Sike', John, Joseph, and Joseph Bowman all were recorded in Jessamine County. [This account of Conrad Earthenhouse's military career was taken from his affidavit sworn before Justice Thomas Hawkins on 27 January 1843. He was 88 and too ill to apply for his pension in open court.]

Earthenhouse and Zike were members of the Moravian Chuch in Jessamine County, which had been built along Jessamine Creek in 1794. Many of the families that would intermarry with the Earthenhouses and Zikes migrated to Kentucky from the Moravian settlements in Maryland. In his later years, Conrad was a farmer and weaver, and a loyal member of the Union Christian Church. He is buried in the old Church lot on Short Run Road.