Scottish Soldiers in Colonial America, Part Four

Description

This marks the third volume (and fourth part) in a series on Scottish colonial soldiers compiled by emigration authority David Dobson. (The first volume was published as two parts in one.) Of particular relevance for the latest installment, the British Crown recruited a number of Scots regiments (e.g., Fraser’s Highlanders) to serve on its behalf during the French and Indian War. A number of these veterans received land for their service, which helped to inspire a massive increase in Highlander settlement in the years leading up to the American Revolution. Scots fought on both sides of the latter conflict. After that war, large numbers of Scottish soldiers from former Loyalist units and the regular British Army settled in what would become Nova Scotia as well as Prince Edward Island, elsewhere in the Canadian Maritimes, Ontario, and Quebec.

Working from various burgess rolls, the Calendar of Home Office Papers, the Nova Scotia Archives, and published sources such as Blackwood’s Magazine, the Caledonian Mercury, and the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Dr. Dobson has uncovered information on an additional 1,000 Scottish colonial solders not found in his earlier books in this series.

By way of illustration, one such soldier was “Peter McDonald, from Inverness-shire, emigrated via Fort William on 4 September 1775 aboard the Glasgow bound for New York, arrived there on 31 October 1775. Impressed into the 84th (Royal Highland Emigrants) Regiment on 1 November 1775, then sent to Boston and later Halifax, Nova Scotia.”