To some it's a major thing of pride to have a Revolutionary War ancestor. The first of my German surname to come to California in 1850 married a woman from Wetzlar who was the daughter of a Hessian army officer. Imagine my surprise when I read that among the Hessian units fighting on the British side was a guy with her maiden nane, one Leutnant Dietrich von Gottschall, Infanterie Regiment von Mirbach.