Lieutenant-General Sir Samuel Auchmuty, (22 June 1758 – 11 August 1822) was an American-born British Army general, who served in a number of military campaigns in India, Africa and South America during the Napoleonic period. Early life, family and education Auchmuty was born in New York City in 1758, and educated at King's College, the progenitor of today's Columbia University, where he graduated in 1775. Auchmuty's grandfather, Robert Auchmuty (d. 1750), was descended from a family settled in Fife, Scotland, in the 14th century. Robert Auchmuty's father (Samuel's great grandfather) had moved to Ireland in 1699, and Robert emigrated to America and settled in Boston, where he practised law with success. Robert Auchmuty was appointed to the court of admiralty in 1703, which office he resigned shortly afterward; but he was reappointed in 1733. He was in England in 1741 as agent for the colony, and in that year published in London a pamphlet entitled The Importance of Cape Breton to the British Nation, and a Plan for Taking the Place. Auchmuty's father, also named Samuel (16 January 1722 Boston6 March 1777 New York City), was a clergyman. He graduated from Harvard in 1742, studied theology in England, and was appointed assistant minister of Trinity Church in New York. In 1764 he became rector, and had charge of all the churches in the city. He continued to read prayers for the king during the American Revolutionary War, until Lord Stirling, in command at New York, compelled him to desist; whereupon he locked the churches and withdrew to New Jersey, ordering that no services should be held until the prayers could be read without abridgment. When the British captured New York he passed the American lines amid great hardships. He found his church and parsonage burned and the church records destroyed. The exposure that he underwent in order to evade the American sentries caused his death. His uncle, son of Auchmuty's grandfather and also named Robert (born in Boston; died December 1788 in Marylebone, London), was an eloquent and successful advocate in Boston. He was one of the counsel for the soldiers engaged in the Boston Massacre, and became a judge of admiralty in 1769; but in 1776, being a zealous Loyalist, he withdrew to England. His and Thomas Hutchinson's letters from Boston to England, which were sent back to the colonies by Benjamin Franklin in 1773, caused great excitement. Auchmuty's