Scottish Soldiers in Colonial America, Consolidated Edition. In Two Volumes. Volume II

Description

Between 1997 and 2024, Clearfield Company published the eight-part series, Scottish Soldiers in Colonial America, by David Dobson. We are delighted to present those books in a new, fully-indexed, consolidated edition in two volumes.

Although Scottish soldiers could be found in the Americas during the seventeenth century—oftentimes originally transported as prisoners of war and subsequently recruited into the British army–It was not
until the mid-eighteenth century that the British government began to raise Highland regiments, such as Fraser’s Highlanders, to fight in North America. The French and Indian War led to significant
recruitment in Scotland, particularly in the Highlands, for service in America. The allocation of land to former military personnel in the aftermath of the war was a major incentive to settle by former soldiers.

On the outbreak of the American Revolution, former soldiers, who had received land grants in America, were recalled for duty by the British government. For example, many former Scottish soldiers, who had been settled in the Mohawk Valley of upper New York, were recruited into the King’s Royal Regiment of New York. After the war, large numbers of soldiers from former Loyalist units and from the regular British Army regiments were settled in what would become Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Ontario, and Quebec. The practice of settling former soldiers in the colonies continued into the nineteenth century. For example, when the War of 1812 revealed the insecurity of the American-Canadian borders, Britain alleviated the problems by establishing settlements for former military personnel along the American-Canadian border.

This consolidation edition in two volumes identifies over 10,000 Scottish soldiers who served in the Americas. The new comprehensive index of names at the back of each volume enables genealogists and historians to easily identify every person named in the soldier descriptions—spouses, children, parents, ship captains, and so on–and not just the soldiers themselves. Included in Volume II is a detailed list of Scottish regiments that were stationed in colonial America that originally appeared in Part Eight. The Appendix in Volume II contains all the “American” entries from the author’s 2021 book, Scottish Soldiers in Europe and America, 1600-1700, which was published separately from the colonial America series.