Background
John Montresor was the son of James Gabriel Montrésor and his wife Mary (Haswell), was born at Gibraltar.
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
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John Montresor was the son of James Gabriel Montrésor and his wife Mary (Haswell), was born at Gibraltar.
Montrésor's father taught him as a youth something of engineering, and in 1754, he took him to America to join Braddock's army. He became ensign and later lieutenant in 1755, and was appointed by Braddock as an additional engineer, though the ordnance board did not place him on the establishment as a practitioner engineer until 1758. During the Seven Years' War his work consisted principally in leading special scouting expeditions and carrying dispatches. He was wounded at the Monongahela, served along the Mohawk and at Fort Edward in 1756, went to Halifax with Loudoun in 1757, was present at Amherst's capture of Louisbourg and Wolfe's siege of Quebec, and served with Murray in the final campaign of 1760. His extra services included a winter expedition in 1758 to the interior of Cape Breton Island; an arduous overland journey in winter from Quebec to New England, in which his party suffered the extremes of hunger and cold; and the exploration, in 1761, of the Kennebec river route to Canada. For two years, he was intermittently engaged upon a survey of the St. Lawrence River. He ended the war as a subengineer, with the rank of lieutenant. In Pontiac's War, 1763, Montrésor carried dispatches from Amherst to the commander at Detroit, Maj. Henry Gladwin. His party was shipwrecked at the east end of Lake Erie, attacked by Indians soon after it came ashore, but succeeded finally in relieving the garrison. The next year he fortified the portage at Niagara, and went with Bradstreet to Detroit, where he improved the defenses. He was a hostile witness of the Stamp Act riots of 1765 in New York and Albany.
In 1766, he solicited preferment in England, whence he returned as engineer extraordinary and captain-lieutenant, with a commission as barrackmaster for the ordnance in North America. During the next few years he improved the fortifications or repaired barracks at New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and the Bahamas, and surveyed the boundary line between New York and New Jersey. During the Revolution the British made little use of Montrésor's long American experience. He was commissioned as chief engineer in America in 1775, with the rank of engineer in ordinary and captain, was superseded, reappointed, and again superseded. He was present at Lexington, Bunker Hill, and the capture of Long Island; he drew the approaches before Mud Island (Philadelphia), which he himself had built; and acted as chief engineer at the Brandywine. As Howe's aide-de-camp, he brought to the American lines the news and a description of Nathan Hale's execution. In 1778, having incurred Clinton's displeasure, he returned to England, where for twenty years he struggled to pass his accounts at the Treasury. Testifying before a committee of the House of Commons in 1779, he was non-committal, and seemed to know "hardly anything" about the conduct of the war. After retiring from the army, he traveled for a year on the Continent, and spent the remainder of his life at Belmont, Kent, and Portland Place, London.
Montresor served as an ensign and engineer during the French and Indian War in North America. Just before the American Revolution, he was promoted to captain lieutenant and engineer extraordinary. During the war, Montresor marched with the British to Concord, and was involved in nearly all of the campaigns in the north until after the Battle of Brandywine in 1777.
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
Montresor was a cousin of Susanna Haswell Rowson, and is said to have been the model from which the hero of Charlotte Temple was drawn.
Montresor purchased Montrésor's (Randall's) Island in New York harbor, where he lived with his wife and family, having married, March 1, 1764, Frances, daughter of Thomas Tucker of Bermuda.
19 November 1704 – 6 January 1776 Was a British military engineer.
1811 – 15 December 1887 Was a Royal Navy officer who went on to be Commander-in-Chief, East Indies & Cape of Good Hope Station.
18 April 1767 - 10 March 1837 Was a general in the British Army.
November 24, 1768 – 1801 Was an early American maritime fur trader to the Pacific Northwest of North America.
1762 – 2 March 1824 Was a British-American novelist, poet, playwright, religious writer, stage actress, and educator.
1756–1822 Was a British Army general.
