NEW GLASGOW - John Ashton will speak about the history of the 82nd Highland Regiment and its ties to Pictou County at the Pictou County Roots Society in the New Glasgow Library Tuesday at 7 p.m.
Ashton said he will give a presentation about history of the regiment, and how soldiers in it were offered land in Pictou County.
“I’ll go into a PowerPoint presentation with reasons why the regiment was formed, the mutiny that happened within the regiment - there were nine soldiers and an officer killed,” he said. “It’s a huge regiment that got a huge track of land in Merigomish all the way from Middle River to Lismore. The 26,000 acres of land were given to this 82nd regiment.”
Ashton said those looking to see if they are descendents of the soldiers that settled in the land grants are encouraged to attend his presentation.
“Names like Arbuckle, Ballantyne, McQueen, Dewar, Robertson and Dunn are just some of the names of the soldiers given land grants back in 1784 and those are prominent names in the community now,” he said. “Their descendents stayed in the area and became contributors to Pictou County.”
Ashton said the 82nd regiment was organized in Scotland and based out of Halifax to fight in the war of independence in the U.S.
The soldiers of the 82nd regiment were offered the land grants in Pictou County in return for being loyal to the crown during the war of independence.
“There were soldiers given land grants throughout the county, not just the 82nd,” he said. “There were about eleven Scottish regiments that were organized and out of the eleven, most were given land grants and a lot of them stayed in the area.”
