The Life of General Hugh Mercer With Brief Sketches of General George Washington,

Hugh Mercer was born in 1726 in Aberdeenshire, Scotland...Although trained as a doctor he would go on to serve in a military capacity as physician in Bonnie Prince Charlie’s 1746 Jacobite rebellion. Following the decisive failure of the revolt at the battle of Culloden, Mercer fled his native country and sought refuge in the American colonies...His fighting days were only just beginning, seeing service in the Seven Years War and most famously in the American War of Independence.

“In the early days of the Revolution, Mercer took command of a small force of Virginia Minute Men from Spotsylvania, King George, Stafford, and Caroline Counties. Eventually, he rose to the rank of brigadier general in the Continental Army, and in the winter of 1776 accompanying his old acquaintance, George Washington, in the New York City Campaign, and subsequent retreat to New Jersey.

Following the Patriot victory at Trenton, New Jersey, Mercer led a vanguard of 350 soldiers toward Princeton, New Jersey with orders from Washington to destroy the Stony Brook Bridge. On January 3, 1777, Mercer met a larger British force under the command of Col. Charles Mawhood at Clarke’s Orchard. The struggle between these two forces quickly turned into a race to secure the strategic position on the heights of a nearby hill...As his men began to fall back, Mercer stepped forward and desperately rallied his men with the words “Forward! Forward!” His command was met by the forceful thrust of British bayonets to his chest, and he fell to the ground.

Finding Mercer still alive, Continental soldiers removed him to a nearby oak tree, which would later bear his name, and finally to the field hospital in the Thomas Clarke House, where he died of his wounds on January 12, 1777. The Patriots ultimately succeeded in driving the British from Princeton, and the legacy of General Mercer’s courageous efforts became a rallying cry for American troops.”-Battlefields.org