Forgotten revolutionary

Going through some Mother’s Day pictures I took at my mom’s cemetery, one seemed to merit additional attention. (While it didn’t seem eye-catching enough for my Mother’s Day post, I didn’t want to forget about it.)
If you can get past the poor quality and the shadows, the inscription reads as follows:

In Memory of
Gen HUGH MERCER
who fell in the battle
of Princeton
January 3, 1777
Died January 12, 1777
Removed from Christ Church
yard on the 26th of November
1840.

I’d vaguely heard of the guy (there are Mercer counties in both PA and NJ), and I knew the battle of Princeton occurred shortly after George Washington’s fabled crossing of the Delaware, but looking at the picture of the grave made me do something historians have traditionally been unable to do — simply Google the name “Hugh Mercer.”
He’s such an amazing guy that a blog post is the least I can do. The son of a Scottish Presbyterian minister, he grew up in the days when they didn’t treat adults as children, so he attended the University of Aberdeen at age 15, became a doctor, and, while still in his teens he was an assistant surgeon in the Jacobite Rebellion under the command of Bonnie Prince Charlie. Serving in this capacity, he witnessed the notorious British atrocities committed against the Jacobites under orders of the British commander William the Duke of Cumberland (son of King George II):

Cumberland ordered his men to execute all the Jacobite wounded and prisoners, an act for which he was known afterwards as “the Butcher”.

Obviously, Mercer was very fortunate not to have been captured. Jacobites were considered traitors, and no one would have wanted to die a traitor’s death. The young Scot managed to elude capture, and found passage to Philadelphia:

According to the biographers of Mercer’s early life, he slipped away on a ship bound for Philadelphia. Upon his arrival, he went to the Pennsylvania back country where he served as a doctor to the widely dispersed settlers for several years.
These certainly seem like rugged and isolating surroundings for a man of his education and breeding. And though some fugitives who came to America established themselves in more familiar routines, we can assume Mercer still felt unsafe at the hands of the English.

And who could blame him?
His story is almost a textbook case of how to create a future revolutionary.
Living in the Pennsylvania back country where he lived and practiced for eight years (near Mercersburg, named after him), he was eventually drawn into the French-Indian War on the British side, apparently because the atrocities committed against the British so reminded him of what the British had done ten years earlier to the Jacobites. Ultimately, this led to a friendship with George Washington, and a move to Fredericksburg, Virginia:

In 1755, when General Edward Braddock’s army was cut down by the French and Indians, Mercer was shocked by the same butchery he remembered at Culloden. He came to the aid of the wounded and eventually took up arms in support of the army that a few years back was hunting him, this time as a soldier, not a surgeon. By 1756 he was commissioned a captain in a Pennsylvania regiment, and accompanied Lt. Col. John Armstrong’s expedition on the raid of the Indian village of Kittanning in September 1756. During the attack, Mercer was badly wounded and separated from his unit. He trekked 100 miles through the woods for fourteen days, injured and with no supplies, until he found his way back to Fort Shirley, where he was recognized and promoted. He rose to the rank of colonel and commanded garrisons. It was during these trying times that Mercer developed a life-long and warm friendship with another colonel, George Washington. After befriending several Virginia men, Mercer moved to Fredericksburg, Virginia in 1760 to begin his medical practice anew at the conclusion of the war.

(During this period, many Pennsylvania settlers fled south to Virginia.) No doubt the irony wasn’t lost on Mercer that his new hometown to the south was named for Frederick the brother of the “Butcher” and father of the future mad King George.
What seems to have rekindled his hatred for the British was what would probably be called gun control today — British confiscation of militia powder stores. This did not set well with Mercer, then an activist who appears to have enjoyed drinking and plotting:

…the sociable Scotsman [Mercer] was frequently enjoying the hospitality of his brother-in-law’s tavern in the next block. He was the most frequent patron of the tavern and also bought large quantities of meat and staples from Weedon’s supply business.
He was often at “supper and club” joining the group who ate and drank together. As feelings ran high in 1775, no one was more of an activist than Hugh Mercer (except perhaps his brother-in-law Weedon). In March, Mercer treated the new Independent Company to punch. In July, he paid for four bowls of punch for the volunteers who had gone to Williamsburg to protest the confiscation of the stores in the powder magazine.
In September 1775, Mercer was elected head of the regional Minute Men (consisting of the surrounding four counties). But he was then appointed an officer in the 2nd Regiment created by the Virginia Convention; and before the year was out, he was promoted to colonel by the convention and then placed in charge of the newly created 3rd Regiment.
Early in February 1776, the Continental Congress took six Virginia regiments into the Continental Line (army), including Mercer’s.

By then he had less than a year to live. What seems to have sealed his fate was his having been mistaken for George Washington by British troops:

While leading a vanguard of 350 soldiers, Mercer’s brigade encountered two British regiments and a mounted unit. A fight broke out at an orchard grove and Mercer’s horse was shot from under him. Getting to his feet, he was quickly surrounded by British troops who mistook him for George Washington and ordered him to surrender. Outnumbered, he drew his saber and began an unequal contest. He was finally beaten to the ground by musket butts and bayonet thrusts.
When he learned of the British attack and saw some of Mercer’s men in retreat, Washington himself entered the fray. Washington rallied Mercer’s men and pushed back the British regiments, but Mercer had been left on the field to die with multiple bayonet wounds to his body and blows to his head. (Legend has it that a beaten Mercer, with a bayonet still impaled in him, did not want to leave his men and the battle and was given a place to rest on a white oak tree’s trunk, while those who remained with him stood their ground. The tree became known as “the Mercer Oak” and is the key element of the seal of Mercer County, New Jersey.)

Despite the best efforts of noted Revolutionary physician Benjamin Rush, Mercer died of his wounds eight days later.
This was truly a hell of a guy.
With a hell of a genetic pool, too. (His direct descendants include Johnny Mercer and General George S. Patton.) There doesn’t seem to be any formal portrait of him, but a contemporary sketch by revolutionary era artist John Trumbull survives:

I can see why he might have been mistaken for Washington.
Of course, what matters most today would be the question of who owned slaves. George Washington’s slave Hercules is more famous than Hugh Mercer — by a Google hit ratio of nearly seven to one.
I know it will sound mean-spirited, but I think Hugh Mercer merits more attention than a slave — even if the slave was known as an excellent chef. Not that either should be forgotten, but I’ve read more about the latter than the former.
And if I hadn’t stumbled upon Hugh Mercer’s grave, I’d have never written this blog post.