Hugh Mercer

Life & Legacy

Hugh Mercer (January 16, 1726 – January 12, 1777) was a Scottish brigadier general in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. He fought in the New York and New Jersey campaign and was mortally wounded at the Battle of Princeton.
Mercer was born in Pitsligo, Aberdeenshire, Scotland and studied medicine at the University of Aberdeen. He served as an assistant surgeon in Charles Edward Stuart's army during the Battle of Culloden in the Jacobite rising of 1745.
The uprising failed, and Mercer escaped to the Province of Pennsylvania where he lived in Greencastle, near Mercersburg, Pennsylvania and Fredericksburg, Virginia. He worked as a physician and established an apothecary. He served alongside George Washington in the provincial troops during the French and Indian War, and he and Washington became close friends.