James Gabriel Montresor was a British military engineer.
Background
James Gabriel Montresor was born on Broad Street or St. James's, Westminster, on 19 November 1704. He was the son of James Gabriel Le Tresor of Thurland Hall, Nottingham, who, though a native of Caen, Normandy, was a naturalized British subject, a major of the Royal Scots Fusileers, and lieutenant-governor of Fort William. His mother, Nanon de Hauteville, was also of Norman stock.
Career
Montrésor began his military career as a matross in the Royal Artillery at Minorca in 1727, and served a year at Gibraltar as bombardier. In 1731, he was commissioned as a practitioner engineer, and for the next twenty-three years, with a single intermission, he lived at Gibraltar, rising finally to be chief engineer there, a subdirector, but with no higher army rank than a lieutenancy in the 14th Foot. His knowledge of fortifications became as profound as his practical, if unimaginative, mind permitted. He improved the defenses of Gibraltar. In 1754, Montrésor was selected as chief engineer in America, accompanied Braddock's expedition, and was wounded at the Monongahela. The order of 1757 giving army rank to engineers made him a major, and in 1758 he became director and lieutenant-colonel. His services throughout the war were confined to New York, for successive commanders distrusted both his ability to direct a siege and his physical endurance. They left to him the work for which his experience had fitted him, the administration of the corps of engineers and the designing and construction of forts, blockhouses, and such buildings as barracks, hospitals, and storehouses. He was more skilled than his colleagues in adapting European systems of fortification to frontier conditions, and more tactful in working with the provincial troops who performed most of the actual construction work. Montrésor planned and directed considerable building in northern New York, at Albany, along the Mohawk, up the Hudson, especially at Saratoga and Fort Edward, and at Fort William Henry. In 1757, he was with Webb at Fort Edward when Montcalm took Fort William Henry; in 1758, he remained at that post while an engineer of inferior rank directed Abercromby's disastrous attack on the lines before Ticonderoga; in 1759 Amherst left him in charge of the rebuilding of new Fort George at the lower end of Lake George. Following an accident in 1759, leave was given him. He returned to England in 1760 and for two years traveled abroad for his health. During the rest of his life, he remained in England, in active service as an engineer, though he resigned his lieutenant's commission in the 14th. He designed and superintended the construction of powder magazines at Purfleet, served as chief engineer at Chatham, and in 1772 received his colonelcy. For his American services, he was granted ten thousand acres to the east of Lake Champlain. He died at New Gardens, Teynham, Kent, where he was buried.
Achievements
Connections
Montrésor was married, first, on June 11, 1735, to Mary, daughter of Robert Haswell, who was with him at Gibraltar and accompanied him to New York; second, on August 25, 1766, to Henrietta, daughter of Henry Fielding, the novelist; and third, to Frances, daughter of H. Nicholls, and widow of William Kemp, who brought him New Gardens. John Montrésor was a son of his first marriage.