Hugh Mercer (16 January 1726 – 12 January 1777) was a Scottish-born American military officer and physician who participated in the Seven Years' War and Revolutionary War. Born in Pitsligo, Scotland, he studied medicine in his home country and served with the Jacobite forces of Bonnie Prince Charlie, participating in the Battle of Culloden in 1746. With the failure of the Jacobite rising, Mercer escaped to Pennsylvania. There, he served alongside a young George Washington in the British colonial forces during the French and Indian War, and was seriously wounded during an engagement in September 1756. Mercer settled in Virginia, continued his work as a physician, and later became a brigadier general in the American Continental Army and close friend to George Washington. Mercer died as a result of wounds received at the Battle of Princeton in January 1777, becoming a fallen hero and rallying symbol of the American Revolution. Early life and career Mercer was born 16 January 1726 at Pitsligo manse, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, to Ann Monro and the Reverend William Mercer, a minister in the Church of Scotland. At 15, he began studying medicine at the University of Aberdeen's Marischal College, and subsequently graduated as a physician in 1744. He was assistant surgeon in the army of Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745, and was present at the Battle of Culloden when Charles' army was defeated on 16 April 1746, and many survivors were hunted down and killed. As a fugitive in his homeland in 1747, Mercer fled Scotland after months in hiding. He bought his way onto a ship and moved to America, settling near what is now Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, and practiced medicine for eight years. Seven Years' War In 1755, when General Edward Braddock's army was cut down by the French and Indians during the first British attempt to take Fort Duquesne, 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 prior had hunted 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 through the woods for 14 days,