Sketch of General Hugh Mercer, Jr. (Study for The Death of General Mercer at the Battle of Princeton, January 3, 1777), by John Trumbull, 1791.
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Sketch of General Hugh Mercer, Jr. (Study for The Death of General Mercer at the Battle of Princeton, January 3, 1777), by John Trumbull, 1791.
Born in Scotland in 1726, Hugh Mercer was twenty-one when he stepped off a ship in Philadelphia in 1747. He drifted west to the Scots-Irish settlements of the Pennsylvania's Cumberland Valley, where he spent the next eight years practicing medicine. Commissioned a captain in the Pennsylvania regiment in 1756, Mercer was a hero of the French and Indian War, leading the daring Kittanning Expedition on western Pennsylvania hostiles along with John Armstrong. He died on January 12, 1777, after being repeatedly bayoneted at the Battle of Princeton. Mercer County, New Jersey is also named in honor of this valiant general.