Friederike Charlotte Luise Riedesel

Friederike Charlotte Louise Riedesel was born in Germany to an aristocratic military family. When she was sixteen years old she married cavalry captain Friederich Adolphus von Riedesel, who later served as a major general under General John Burgoyne in Canada during the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783). Friederike joined her husband in Canada in 1777, bringing their three daughters with her. After surviving the Battles of Saratoga, in 1779 she and her family were moved to the Albemarle Barracks in Charlottesville for nearly a year, in which time she struck up a friendship with Thomas Jefferson. After the war she and her family (including a new daughter named Amerika) returned to Germany. After her husband’s death she published a collection of their wartime letters, which sold well. She died in Berlin in 1808.