SONS OF THE MOUNTAINS
THE HIGHLAND REGIMENTS IN THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR, 1756-1767
Volume I and II

 

 

Three proud Highland regiments fought in North America during the Seven Year's War--the 77th Foot (Montgomery's Highlanders), the 78th Foot (Fraser's Highlanders), and the famous Black Watch, more correctly known at the time as the Royal Highland Regiment. Undoubtedly, the exploits of the 42nd, 77th and 78th Highlanders in some of the most bloody and desperate battles on the North American continent were a critical factor in transforming the overall image of Highlanders from Jacobite rebels to Imperial heroes in the latter half of the 18th century. But the everyday story of these regiments --how they trained, worked, played, fought and died from their own point of view--has never been seriously told.

Sons of the Mountains: A History of the Highland Regiments in North America During the French & Indian War, 1756-1767, is a two-volume set which was co-published spring 2006 by Purple Mountain Press and the Fort Ticonderoga Museum and in Canada by Robin Brass Studio. It chronicles the Highland regiments' fighting performance and experiences from the time they were raised in the Highlands and stepped ashore in North America, to their disbandment in 1763; or, as in the case of the 42nd, reduced in establishment and left on lonely garrison duty in the American wilderness until their recall and return to Ireland in 1767.

Volume One of Sons of the Mountains follows all three regiments on their various campaigns in the different theatres of war. As they range from the wilderness of the Ohio Forks to the wind-swept crags of Signal Hill in Newfoundland, and from the waters of the Great Lakes to the torrid swamps and cane fields of the "Sugar Islands," the reader will be exposed to all the major conflicts and actions of the "Great War for Empire" as seen though the eyes of the Highland soldier.

Cluny, the 27th Hereditary Chief of Clan Macpherson, writes from Blairgowrie, Scotland: "As a direct descendant of a Clansman who was present on the Heights of Carillon and at Fort Ticonderoga in July 1758 I feel that I understand now far better how my forebear and his fellow Highlanders must have felt and lived and fought, and relate much more closely to those 'Sons of the Mountains' of long ago. I warmly commend Lt Colonel McCulloch's book to readers across the Atlantic and here in Scotland. He has done a great service to the memory of those who fought and died with these distinguished Regiments."
Volume Two of Sons of the Mountains will appeal to all families of Scottish descent and serious genealogists. It features comprehensive biographical histories of all regimental officers from all the major clans (over 350 entries) who served in the regiments.
Also included in the glossaries are regimental muster rolls and land petitions of discharged Highlanders.
Marie Fraser editor of Canadian Explorer, newsletter of the Clan Fraser Society of Canada writes: "Besides being compelling Highland history, S.O.T.M. is a valuable genealogical resource for all of Scottish heritage. With over 350 officers' biographies, career details and genealogical notes in the annexes, McCulloch has identified the complex ties of kinship, marriage and friendship that bound the most prominent Scottish families of the day together during the Seven Years War between Britain and France fought in North America, known to some as the French & Indian War."
Lavishly illustrated with artwork by Robert Griffing, Steve Noon, Peter Rindisbacher, Gary Zaboly, Charles Stolz and John Buxton, as well as with contemporary prints, maps and portraits from the collections of the Black Watch Museums of Scotland and Canada, the Fort Ticonderoga Museum, the Fort Ligonier Museum, the William L. Clements Library, the National Army Museum, Chelsea, the David M. Stewart Museum, Montreal, the National Archives of Canada and the Library of Congress, Sons of the Mountains is a visual delight.

Without a doubt, Sons of the Mountains is the most complete and informative work on the history of early Highland regiments of the British army in North America to date.

 
VOLUME ONE: 392 pages, illustrated, 8.5 x 11, $29.00, paper, 2006
VOLUME TWO: 208 pages, illustrated, 8.5 x 11, $19.00, paper, 2006
A Purple Mountain Press original co-published with Fort Ticonderoga
Published in Canada by Robin Brass Studio, Toronto
 
 

THROUGH SO MANY DANGERS
The Memoirs and Adventures of Robert Kirk, Late of the Royal Highland Regiment

Edited by Ian M. McCulloch and Timothy J. Todish
Introduction by Stephen Brumwell and Artwork by Robert Griffing

 

 
"I enlisted in his Majesty's 77th Regt. Of Foot, commanded by Colonel Archibald Montgomery in the latter end of the year 1756," Robert Kirkwood recorded on the opening pages of his Memoirs, "from which time I was employed in recruiting and Disciplining the regiment, which was mostly composed of impress'd men from the Highlands." Kirkwood's regiment (initially called the First Highland Battalion, later numbered 62nd, then re-numbered the 77th Foot) was not a typical marching regiment, being one of two Highland battalions specially raised for service in North America.
Through So Many Dangers is the first reprint in over 250 years of this young Scot's personal experiences of battle and captivity in the wilderness of North America during the French and Indian War. Originally entitled The Memoirs and Adventures of Robert Kirk; Late of the Royal Highland Regiment, this small, obscure book was first published in Limerick, Ireland, 1775. Kirkwood's story constitutes a very rare voice-from-the-ranks account of the conflict, a remarkable chronicle by a private soldier of some of the sharpest woods fighting and skirmishing ever encountered by the British army. Kirkwood's experiences were indeed remarkable: a prisoner of the Shawnee at Fort Duquesne in 1758; a participant on Robert Rogers' famous raid on St Francis in 1759; a light infantryman at the storming of craggy Signal Hill in Newfoundland in 1762; a survivor of Henry Bouquet's celebrated victory over the western Indians at Bushy Run, 1763; and one of a hundred Black Watch soldiers who went down the Ohio to the Mississippi in 1765 to take possession of Fort de Chartres in the Illinois country.
Kirkwood could rightly claim in his Memoirs that "few Men have traveled more than [me] in the back parts of North America." From Niagara Falls to Newfoundland, from the Carolinas to the great western plains flanking the Mississippi, this soldier of the 42nd and 77th Foot covered some 5,000 miles by foot, canoe, whaleboat and transport ship in the course of his ten years' campaigning. On his return with the Black Watch to Ireland in 1767, after ten years of "service truly critical" in North America, our roguish hero was an accomplished marksman, hunter, and tracker, proficient in the use of canoes, snowshoes and tumplines, the ultimate "Light Infantryman" of the self-styled "American Army."
This reprint constitutes a superb team effort from several experts in their chosen fields. Through So Many Dangers is wonderfully llustrated with paintings by reknowned American artist, Robert Griffing. An excellent and insightful introduction by best-selling British historian, Stephen Brumwell, (author of the critically-acclaimed Redcoats), sets the scene, while annotations, biographical notes, and essays by French and Indian War historians, Lt. Col. Ian McCulloch and Timothy Todish, provide a solid framework whereon the whole tale hangs.
It is hoped that this new edition will help stimulate interest in Robert Kirkwood and the frontier environment that provided the dramatic raw material for his Memoirs. At a time when scholarly books and articles on colonial North America's 'backcountry' are emerging thick and fast, Through So Many Dangers offers a fresh and compelling voice from a man who experienced that violent and fascinating world first hand—and who, against all the odds, lived to tell the tale.
Kirkwood's rare and exciting tale of a common British soldier during the French and Indian War was first published in Limerick, Ireland, in 1775, on the eve of the American Revolution, and until recently it has gone largely unnoticed by historians. The cover painting, He Befriended Me Greatly, was created by noted artist Robert Griffing especially for this edition.
174 pages, illustrated, 8.5 x 11, index, 2004
$20.00 paperback, $100.00 deluxe cloth edition limited to 250 numbered copies, each signed by the four contributors: McCulloch, Todish, Brumwell and Griffing--A Purple Mountain Press original, 2004
 

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