A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Riedesel, Frederica, Baroness de
RIEDESEL, FREDERICA, BARONESS DE,
Was the daughter of Masson, the Prussian minister of state, and was born in Brandenborgh in 1746. In 1763, she married Lieutenant-Colonel Baron de Riedesel, who was appointed, in 1777, to the command of the Brunswick forces in the British service in America, and his wife accompanied him there with her three young children. She was with that part of the army commanded by General Burgoyne, during all their disasters, till the defeat at Saratoga, exposed often to privations and dangers from which many of the soldiers would have shrunk. After the capitulation of Burgoyne, Riedesel, who was taken prisoner, was sent to Cambridge, and afterwards to Virginia, but in 1779, was allowed to go to New York. His wife accompanied him in all his wanderings. In 1780, General Riedesel was exchanged; in 1781, they went to Canada; and in 1783, they returned to Germany, where the husband died, in 1800. After this event, the baroness resided in Berlin, where she died, in 1808. She founded there an asylum for military orphans, and an alms-house for the poor in Brunswick.