The year book of the Maine Chapter of the Society of Colonial Wars for 1900 gives much information in regard to Col. Preble’s regiment, Maine being in 1758 a part of Massachusetts. Mention is made in this article of regiments officered by “Col. Doty, Col. Joseph Williams, Col. Nickols, Col. Whitings.”
Also in the New York Colonial Manuscripts, Vol. 10, P. 827 it mentions a force of about 3,000 men nearly all of whom were provincials, under Col. Bradstreet, in the expedition against Fort Frontinac after the battle of July 8, 1758, and of the number of soldiers engaged, the list is given as “New Yorkers 1112, Col. Williams’ regiment 413, Col. Douty’s 248, Rhode Island 318, and Jersey 418.”
It is not clear whether these regiments were at the battle of Ticonderoga and were not mentioned in list page 732 of the New York Colonial Manuscripts because none of the officers were wounded, or whether they were the same regiments but with different officers, a change having been made after the battle.
1759
The provincial regiments mentioned in Commissary Wilson’s Orderly Book as being in the Ticonderoga expedition of 1759 are as follows: Col. Lyman’s, Connecticut; Col. Whiting’s, Connecticut; Col. Worcester’s, Connecticut; Col. Fitch’s, Connecticut; Col. Willard’s, Massachusetts; Col. Ruggle’s, Massachusetts; Col. Lovell’s, New Hampshire; Col. Schuyler’s, New Jersey; Col. Babcock’s, Rhode Island.
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF AS MANY OF THE OFFICERS OF 1758 AS COULD BE TRACED.
James Abercrombie.
James Abercrombie was promoted to a captaincy in the 42nd or 1st Battalion of the Royal Highlanders on the 16th of February, 1756. On the 5th of May, 1759, he was appointed aide de camp to Maj. Gen. Amherst, with whom he made the campaigns of that and the following year. On the 25th of July, 1760, he was appointed Major of the 78th or Fraser’s Highlanders and in September following was employed by Gen. Amherst in communicating to the Marquis de Vaudreuil the conditions preparatory to the surrender of Montreal and in obtaining the signature of that governor to them. (Knox’s Journal). The 78th having been disbanded in 1763, Major Abercrombie retired on half pay. On the 27th of March, 1770, he again entered active service as Lt. Colonel of the 22nd Regiment then serving in America under the command of Lt. Col. Gage and was killed in the memorable Battle of Bunker Hill on the 17th of June, 1775.
New York Colonial Manuscripts by Broadhead, Weed, Parsons Co., Albany, 1856, page 160.