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CAMPAIGN CHEST LT. JAMES GRANT MONTGOMERY'S HIGHLANDERS
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CAMPAIGN CHEST OF Lt. JAMES GRANT
77th REGIMENT OF FOOT
MONTGOMERY'S HIGHLANDERS
1757-1763

This campaign chest descended in the Grant family until the death of Lt. James Grants great-great-granddaughter in 1950, after which it was donated by her step-daughter to the William Prescott Post D.A.R. in Newark, N.Y.

A catalog index card from the chapter lists the chest, names the donor and links her through her stepmother to the Grant family of Wayne County, NY, formerly of Dutchess County. A direct line of descent connects the step-mother with Lt. James Grant, a British officer on half-pay, living on the Beekman Patent in Dutchess County from ca.1764 to 1796. (Mildred Ely is the stepdaughter of Charlotte G. Bronk, not her daughter. Minnie Snyder is really Charlotte Bronk's sister. Both women are Grants. Full discussion of the errors in the card and their explanation would take too much space here. Suffice it to say the writer had some stray facts available to her and tried to weave them together. Minnie Snyder died in 1948. Charlotte Bronk in 1950. Not being a Grant, Mildred Ely donated the chest sometime after. The card was likely written after Mildred Ely's death in 1976, or by someone not in direct contact with her to straighten out the relationships, so the details were liable to get a bit mixed up.)

Lt. Grant served in the 77th Regiment from 1757 to 1763. He came out with the regiment as a Gentleman Volunteer, was commissioned ensign to date September 1758, lieutenant as of March 1762, and retired upon half-pay on December 24, 1763, on the disbanding of the regiment.

Tracing service history for the period is difficult, but Grant is documented on two significant campaigns of the regiment dealing with the Forbes Road, Fort Bedford, Fort Ligonier and Fort Pitt. In recommending Grant for commission as ensign, Col. Montgomery notes that he was a relation of Major Grants, recommends him for commission without purchase, and specifically states he was in the Late action, referring to Major Grants disastrous raid on Fort Duquesne September 13, 1758.

Two solid 1763 references place him with Col. Bouquet during Pontiacs Rebellion. Lt. Grant is specifically named as the messenger carrying a dispatch on June 14 to Bouquet from the commander of the composite highland light battalion notifying him of the units march and asking for further orders. This makes him a likely participant in the Battle of Bushy Run. A second letter in the Bouquet papers is from Grant himself and makes clear he is in command of Fort Bedford in October and struggling to keep the supply line open.

Grant is also a likely participant in Amhersts 1759 expedition against Ticonderoga and Crown Point, his 1760 march from Fort Oswego to capture Montreal (effectively ending French rule in North America,) and the 1761 West Indies expedition that captured Martinique and Havana. Many of the same companies participated in all three campaigns and ended up in the camps around New York, from which the relief forces to Bouquet later set out and Grants 1796 will specifically covers any property in the West Indies.

With the disbanding of the 77th Regiment, Lt. Grant elected to remain in America. He petitions for land grants due former soldiers in 1764 and 1765, and is one of the early settlers on the Beekman Patent in Dutchess County, N.Y. The name of his first wife is unknown, but she bears him James Grant, Jr., in 1770. A second wife, Christine McPherson, bears him the first of several more children in February 1777.

As a British officer on half-pay in New York during the Revolution, Grant had to tread carefully. Neighbors (and possibly a brother) had returned to duty in the British army or with loyalist units and he naturally fell under suspicion. Called before a committee in May 1776 and offered the chance to sign a parole, he declined on the grounds that he was not an enemy to their principles, and later noting, "the Professions of the Committee, were then still great to King and Country." Instead, he managed to strike a bargain to remain while on good behavior. This was modified in February 1777 by the condition that he consider himself a prisoner of war, to the State of New York, on parole and limit his travels to a range of six miles. Occasional charges made by informers brought his name up before Committees on Conspiracies, but he kept his end of the bargain, earning the trust of Governor Clinton, who even gave him a pass for thirty days into New York City on private business in 1779.

In September 1781 Grant petitioned Governor Clinton for relief from some conditions of his parole, with unknown results, but he successfully avoided any of the confiscations or sterner measures taken against loyalists. Indeed, he seems to have engaged in further land purchases and farming after the war. In his 1796 will he divides some 4,000 acres of land in Washington and Dutchess Counties.

These land holdings are mentioned on the catalog index card for the chest, though not with absolute accuracy. Similarly, the cards writer knew Grant was at Fort Bedford, but thinking it took place during the Revolution conflated it with his status of prisoner of war. The placing of Fort Bedford on Long Island is still a puzzle, but the location may come from memory of the regiment's camps near New York City after its return from the West Indies, or even be a confused memory of American prisoners of war held by the British on board prison ships off Long Island in Wallabout Bay during the Revolution.