It was a battle that made history and an embarrassment for General John Forbes's expedition to capture Fort Duquesne. On September 9th, 1758 Major James Grant of Montgomery's 77th marched out from the newly fortified Camp of Loyal Hannon in the Pennsylvanian wilderness with a detachment of approximately 800 men that included his Highlanders, Bouquet’s Royal Americans, provincials from Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia all heading west to encounter the French at Fort Duquesne. This offensive action was to be a surprise or an ambush and without the approval of Forbes, who knew nothing of the assignment. Five days later, the outcome of the expedition revealed itself when ensign James Grant of the 77th (not to be confused with Major Grant) staggered back into camp with a dozen wounded soldiers, some with bloody heads, and a small handful of Indians. The details were thin but the party had been routed and Major Grant was left behind, surrounded by the enemy, and presumed either captured or dead. The following days slowly revealed what transpired. Less than a mile away, a great hill overlooked Fort Duquesne. Major Grant planned to set up an ambush from this prominent ground after a confused attempt the day before. From the foggy heights that morning he had his drums beat reveille in different places to draw out the French and Native Americans from the fort. In a letter to Forbes, Bouquet describes what happened next: 200 Highlanders, 100 Marylanders, and 100 Pennsylvanians were stationed on the heights, and he [Grant] sent Captain McDonald with 100 Highlanders, with the drum beating, straight to the fort…McDonald was scarcely halfway when they heard the whoop of the Indians, who came and fell upon him. He killed so many of their men by his first volley that they spread out and surrounded him. He pierced through them, doing which he was killed. [George] Monro’s and Hugh McKenzie’s companies which went down to aid him were thrown into disorder, and the captains were killed. In a letter later sent to Forbes, Major Grant, recounted, “...our people being Over powered, gave way, where those Officers had been killed, I did all in my power to keep things in Order but to no purpose. The 100 Pensylvanians who were posted upon the right at the greater distance from the Enemy, went Off without Orders, & without Firing a Shott. in short in less than half an Hour all was in Confusion & as soon as that happened we were fired upon from every Quarter.” Robert Kirkwood, captured in battle, also confirmed the chaos, “It is impossible to describe the confusion and horror which ensued, when all hopes of victory was gone.” 187 Highlanders were reported killed or missing and twenty-four wounded. On September 19th, under a flag of truce, a small company marched back to Fort Duquesne, beating the measure of parley delivering a letter from Bouquet, asking of the whereabouts or the needs of the missing. A reply from French Captain Francious Lingeris verified that Major Grant and Captain Hugh McKenzie of the 77th had survived and were currently prisoners, with the exclusion of Ensign John McDonald who was carried away to, “...Detroit with the Hurons. It was impossible for me to get him back.” Virginia militiaman Thomas Grist, who was captured and transported to Detroit with the 77th’s John McDonald, recounts a brutal post-battle account. Prisoners, “were tomohawked, scelped and in short was massacred in the most barbarious manner that can be imamajined.” Some few were thrown into the river. The rest was left in the field, about two or three hundred yards from the fort, and unburied. Thus their effort continued till night, when they began to scrape the flesh and blood from the scalps, and dry them, then tied them on white, red, and black poles, which they made so by pealing the bark and then pain[t]ing them as it suited them. Immediately after they began to beat their drums, shake their rattles, hallow and dance like so many Devils, I suppose, for I never saw in all my life any thing like it. That evening around one of the many campfires, Gist came upon the captured Highlander John McDonald with five other prisoners. “Here I got some stinking beef, rotten tallow, and as bad bread as ever was eat, neither of which I could tast[e]. After some time I threw down my dearskin and laid down on it, and one of the Inidans spread an old blanket with an hundred holes in it over me, so I ended in sleep the most troublesome day I had ever seen.” It would take a year and a month before Gist would make his way back east into English lines. Grant's ill-fated battle eventually embedded itself into the landscape of the future site of Pittsburgh. The Major's name was unceremoniously affixed to the hill of his defeat along with a street on the eastern edge of its rise in the downtown. In 1901, The Daughters of the American Revolution capped off this dubious honor with a marker on the Allegheny County Courthouse reading, "On this hill, the British under Major James Grant were defeated by the French and Indians from Fort Duquesne, September 14, 1758." NOTES
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In October 1847, Bedent Baird Munro, grandson of Donald Munro, had a plat map drawn for his newly purchased thirty-eight acres in Southfield Township. The State of Michigan, like other states in the Northwest Territory, was surveyed and organized in township grids. These townships were then "divided into sections of approximately one square mile" of thirty-six square blocks, each square designated with a section number. According to the Bedent's map, his property was located in Section 3. A 1857 map indeed shows a "B.B. Munro" with property in the northeast area of Section 3 in Southfield Township and expanding north into Section 34 of Bloomfield Township. The plat map also shows a stream of the Rogue River running close to his property. Another document from the Munro Family papers from May 6th, 1848, makes notice that Bedent is free to draw off the water in "Section Numbers thirty-six or thirty-five...which said lands are flown by reason of a Dam" from the owner "Thos. Trolop." The 1857 map also identifies a "Ths Trollope" owning land in Section 35 and a body of water, which we now know by this notice, is dammed. The grid system informed how future roads and property boundaries were to be drawn and is still embedded into our current landscape. Digital maps show that Bedent's thirty-eight acres hugs the northeast corner of 14 Mile Road and Evergreen in Birmingham, Michigan, and his extended land into the south section of Lincoln Hills Golf Course. Although the farms of Bedent's time have been bulldozed and replaced by the suburbs, one can still walk his property on Carriage Lane at the entrance of Greenwich Green Subdivision, Beverly Hills, Michigan. NOTES/LINKS
FORT DUQUESNE CAMPAIGN In March of 1758, to Bouquet’s and the 77th’s relief, a letter arrived ordering the regiments to make sail for Philadelphia in preparation for a large offensive on Fort Duquesne on the western edge of Pennsylvania, “the base of operations for French and Indian war parties.” It was one of the four French forts targeted, the others being Louisbourg in Nova Scotia, Ticonderoga in New York, and Frontenac in Ontario. To successfully attack the fort, however, a newly constructed road must cut across significant barriers— the Allegheny and Laurel Mountains. When the 77th docked in Philadelphia on June 8th, "making a fine appearance," the city was a growing business port, its western skyline along the Delaware River dominated by the spire of Christ Church. Its State House, known today as Independence Hall, also visible, was just completed in 1753. Commanded by the chronically ailing forty-eight-year-old Highland Scott, John Forbes, the regiment was combined with Pennsilvian and Virginia provincials, the latter headed by the Virginian planter-soldier, George Washington. The assembled also included smaller companies from Maryland, Delaware, and North Carolina some of whom needed training to fight in Pennsylvania’s woods. With 1,000 from Montgomery’s regiment, approximately 6,850 strong gathered for the western push, bolstered with the less celebrated camp followers consisting of women, and local independent Cherokee and Catawbas “fighting for their own goals”. With nearly 7,000 gathered in Philadelphia, Donald Munro’s narrative easily becomes lost in the multitude. 77th was composed of companies that were also broken several times into detachments, further putting into question his whereabouts. While we cannot currently create a personal portrait of Donald Munro, a detailed panorama of his world does emerge. Taking this idea a step further, it is very probable that these larger stories of his regiment in the war, at least a good handful, became part of Donald Munro’s personal history. We can imagine the impact on him viewing the budding Philadelphia skyline when the 77th came to port. And, while it is doubtful that he rubbed shoulders with George Washington, he probably later took note of the fact that he served in the same campaign as Washington, which, when you pause and think about it, is remarkable in itself. On June 30th, the 77th marched west from Philadelphia with Forbes. By July 10th, the expedition made 120 miles in “excessive hot weather,” fording the Schuylkill and Susquehanna Rivers utilizing rafts, arriving at Camp Carlisle, one of the staging areas for the attack on Fort Duquesne. As the weeks followed into August, Forbes’s sickness continued to plague him, describing it in his dispatches as “that damn Flux,” “a most violent and tormenting Distemper,” and a “Violent Constipation.” Too ill to proceed, Forbes stayed at Carlisle barracks as Major James Grant of the 77th took two companies west to Fort Loudon. As they moved past Shippensburg, the bucolic Pennsilvian landscape gave evidence of the brutal ongoing war. In his memoirs, Robert Kirkwood of the 77th noted, “Nothing could be more shocking than to view the horrible situation of this beautiful Country, at that time. The Houses deserted, the Corn fields, Orchards, and well-fitted Haggar[t]s yet smoking, melancholy proofs of the barbarous enmity of the merciless Indians. –This scene continued for the extent of eighty miles, from Shippensburg to…Bedford.” As the new road to Fort Duquesne was being laid that August, a detached expedition of 120 Highlanders from the 77th led by Major Alexander Campbell, “were order’d back east from Fort Louden” to Shippensburg to support civilians who were being captured and murdered by enemy scouting parties. Campbell led the Highlanders through passes of the ancient Kittatinny Ridge, scouring “about the Plantations, and the Country” seeing very little action aside from a small volley of fire exchanged between them and the “Enemy." A more fatal encounter was awaiting, however, that September. NOTES
CHARLES TOWN, SOUTH CAROLINA While the 77th sailed across the Atlantic to Charles Town, Colonel Henry Bouquet and his 60th Royal American Regiment arrived on June 23rd. They had sailed from Philadelphia to strengthen the British southern presence and anticipated the Highland regiment’s arrival. The Province of South Carolina was in its twenty-seventh year of being a recognized royal government and Charles Town, without a mayor, met its needs through a local assembly. With little support from this assembly, the town’s welcoming of the Royal American Regiment that summer was found wanting. There were no barracks to be found, nor “beds, nor Straw, nor anything to lie upon.” This would be the housing situation when the 77th anchored on September 10th. By the 29th, Bouquet reported, “Our Troops here are very sickly; the Highland Battalion have over four hundred Sick." Bouquet continually and unsuccessfully petitioned the Commons House of South Carolina for proper quarters to exasperation, losing, according to his accounts, half of the regiment by "Death or Desertion". He details the predicament in an October 16th letter to General John Campbell, the current commander-in-chief of the British army in North America: The greatest difficulty consists still in settling the Quarters in Town, the eternal Struggle in America. My reiterated and pressing Sollicitations on that head have produced no other effect yet than to put sometimes people out of humour, and our men are still without any sort of furniture, not even Straw for the Americans, what could be got, haven been given to the Highlanders… This Town is large & not much crowded with white people, the public houses being few and bad; if the Men had been divided among the inhabitants, ‘till other Quarters could have been provided for them, nobody would have suffer’d much by it, and we should naturally have saved half of the Men lost by Death or Desertion. The Barracks are not yet finish’d for want of Materials. This day the Highlanders have 187 men quarter’d in private houses at the very instance of the Inhabitants; Five hundred more are to go in the Barracks, and the rest remain in scatter’d houses, some wch will be tolerable if repaired and furnished… I advised the Highlanders to make use of the beds they had on board ‘till their Quarters could be ready, but they declined it, being half rotten & not clean. And so it would go through the winter until February when the Charles Town assembly’s only action was agreeing to build new barracks. By then Bouquet could have cared less, thinking little of Charles Town's inhabitants, sardonically reflecting, “the tender regard which has been paid to his majesty’s Troops.” Thus would close Donald Munro's first winter in North America. NOTES
“Farwell, farewell, dear Caledonia’s strand, Rough though thou be, yet still my native land, Exiled from thee, I seek a foreign shore, Friends, kindred, country, to behold no more: By hard oppression driven—-” -Emigrant, Henry Erskine ENLISTMENT IN THE BRITISH ARMY It would be an 18th-century conflict erupting in the Ohio Valley between France and England that displaced native Scot, Donald Munro, to North America. By 1757, the Seven Years' War, also known as the French and Indian War, was not going well for Great Britain. To shore up its military strength, Scotland’s clans became a resource for human capital. Highlanders, some of whom were once in violent opposition with England, were now a source for young recruits for the King’s Army in North America. Three Highland regiments were formed: the 42nd, 77th, and 78th Regiment of Foot. Donald Munro would find his way into the 77th also known as Montgomery's Highlanders, raised by Major Archibald Montgomery. The regiment was meant to consist mainly of Highlanders including the clans: Campbell, Mackenzie, Macdonald, and Grant. The January 1757 Scots Magazine gave a comprehensive list: Lieutenant-Colonel Commandant: Archibald Montgomery, [brother to the Earl of Eglinton]. Majors: James Grant, Alexander Campbell. Captains: Hugh Mackenzie, Roderick Mackenzie, William Macdonald, George Munro. Captain-Lieutenant: Alexander Macintosh. Lieutenants: Alexander Macdonald, James Grant, Robert Grant, Colin Campbell, –Macnab, Duncan Bayne, Joseph Grant, Nicholas Sutherland, Hugh Gordon, Charles Farquarson, Cosmo Macmartin, Donland Campbell, Alexander Mackenzie, Roderick Mackenzie, James Duff, William Mackenzie, Alexander Macdonald, –Macdonald, Henry Munro, Archibald Robertson. Ensigns: William Hagart, Alexander Grant, Ronald Mackinnon, James Grant, William Maclean, –Macrah, Lewis Houston, –Macdonald, George Munro. Staff-officers: – – Chaplain; Allan Stewart, Surgeon; Donald Stewart, Adjutant; Alexander Montgomery, Quartermaster. Robert Kirkwood, an enlisted man who served in the 42nd and the 77th, described the 77th as, "above a Thousand strong all men in prime of their youth, and full of health and vigor." Source material varies regarding Donald Munro’s date of birth but two possible years emerge–1730 or 1739. Depending on the year you choose, this would make the fresh recruit Donald Munro either eighteen or twenty-seven years old, his birth year more likely to be 1739. Kirkwood indicates that the 77th “was mostly composed of impress’d men from the Highlands,” men recruited by force. If Kirkwood’s testimony is reliable, not all who served, served willingly. By April of 1757 Donald’s regiment was reviewed in Glasgow by Charles Hope-Weir, the muster-master general. There they sailed to Donaghadee, Ireland, marching south to Cork. They waited through July when the regiment joined Fraser’s 78th Highlanders. They finally embarked for Charles Town, South Carolina, “under convoy of the Falkland, Enterprise, and Stork sloop” sailing into the deep west of the open Atlantic. Five months later, the regiment arrived in early September, facing the first of many harrowing challenges. NOTES ___________________________________
Two of the most pleasing secondary source readings on the French and Indian War, an event in itself displeasing and violent, are Frances Parkman's, Montcalm and Wolfe (1884) and The Conspiracy of Pontiac (1851). Both books can be easily found used for those on a budget. The Library of America editions are the most readable with a reset typeface and indispensable indexes. Montcalm and Wolfe has the bonus to be combined with two other complimentary subject titles, Count Frontenac and New France, along with, A Half-Century of Conflict. The three are collected under the title, Francis Parkman: France and England in North America: Volume Two. Parkman's work has been rightfully criticized for the negative stereotyping of Native Americans, with the word "savages" sadly marbled throughout its pages. The French culture in North America is also put under a distorted negative lens. Keeping this in mind, Parkman's prose still is a warm nighttime bonfire companion to the stories of yesterday. This tone becomes more alive in The Conspiracy of Pontiac as he describes Detroit and the forests of Michigan 260 years ago. It is hard to resist when a chapter opens with the shameless, "We return once more to Detroit and its beleaguered garrison." In regards to Donald Munro's 77th Highland Regiment and the action they saw during the war, "Chapter XXII, Fort Duquesne" from Montcalm and Wolfe is indispensable as well as "Chapter XX, The Battle of Bushy Run" in Conspiracy of Pontiac. For those who want to dig deeper, which I have, Parkman cites primary sources that are still accessible and arguably more accessible in this digital age. In all, both books are a solid introduction to the events that Donald Munro miraculously navigated when called to serve the King. The French and Indian War is a sprawling history that equally sprawled across the globe with battles lighting-up countries and continents. Putting together the history of Donald Munro's service during this war has been a puzzle, with so many individual primary sources being like pieces scattered across a folding card table. However, using the historical thread of Donald Munro service in Montgomery's 77th Highland Regiment has been an indispensable guide in this research labyrinth. One unexpected outcome in constructing this narrative is that it creates a current foot tour of places and people he encountered. One gets to walk in his footsteps. Here are two historic paths that holds resonance. PHILADELPHIA, PA: The 77th's first campaign came in 1758 where they sailed from Charles Town, South Carolina to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The target was Fort Duquesne on the western edge of the Provence. When the 77th arrived in Philadelphia, the spires of Christ Church and its newly constructed State House, known today as Independence Hall, dominated the skyline. Both can be visited today. At Christ Church, British Brigadier General John Forbes (1707-1759) is interred in its chancel. Despite being terminally ill, Forbes oversaw the capture of Fort Duquesne to its success. LIGONIER (FORT LIGONIER), PA: Fort Ligonier is one of a handful of Pennsylvania historical sites that connects to the 77th and Forbes' campaign to capture Fort Duquesne. Forbes, in his westward push, constructed a new road and temporary forts (redoubts) that are still identified today by historical markers. Fort Ligonier was constructed as the most westward base. The 77th was posted here and also served as a haven for the companies that were routed in a failed attack on Duquesne led by Major James Grant. Today, Fort Ligonier is an active historical site with a reconstructed fort and museum. During the French and Indian War in North America, Donald Munro served in the 77th Regiment of Foot, referred to as "Montgomerie's Highlanders", named for its colonel commandant, Archibald Montgomery (1726-1796). The formation of this regiment appears on page 41 and 42 of the January 28th, 1757 posting in The London Magazine, Or, Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer along with the formation of Simon Fraser's Highlanders (78th).
There is only one document from Donald Munro's past owned by the Munro family and what a document it is! His 1765 land grant for service in Montgomery's Seventy-Seventh Scottish Highland Regiment of Foot during the French and Indian War is a keystone document since there are no other known surviving personal letters. Knowing his specific service in the Seventy-Seventh however opens up a wide field of possible documentary trails to uncover Donald Munro's past. Before the Seventy-Seventh arrived in the warring North American continent, Lieutenant colonel Henry Bouquet of the Sixtieth Regiment of Foot was quartered in Charleston, South Carolina, arriving on June 15, 1757. Bouquet's correspondence are voluminous, six to be exact, and detailed with a flair of humor. He is our witness to the Seventy-Seventh's landing on September 7, 1757, marking Donald Munro's arrival to North America. All however was not well in Charleston. Housing was at a premium and winter quarters were not built for the regiment and illness quickly crept in.
LINKS/NOTES
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John A. StempienJohn A. Stempien maintains the blog and website, Family Munro and is the co-editor of The Liberty Hyde Bailey Gardener's Companion. He lives in west Michigan with his family. Archives
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