A Forsyth Among the Jacobite Rebels of 1746
/The history of the is filled with dramatic names, Highland charges, and the tragic field of Culloden—but tucked quietly within an official government manuscript is the name of one humble Forsyth who stood among those rebels.
In Publications of the Scottish History Society, Volume VIII: List of Rebels, a government report compiled just weeks after Culloden records:
“George Forsyth, servant, Stonywood, Newhills… carried arms at Falkirk and Culloden… lurking.”
This was no family legend written generations later. It was an official list transmitted to the Commissioners of Excise in 1746 naming persons known to have participated in the rebellion against the Hanoverian government.
George Forsyth was described as a servant residing at Stonywood in the parish of Newhills, Aberdeenshire, placing him in the northeast of Scotland—an area that provided many men to Lord Lewis Gordon’s Jacobite regiment.
That location is especially telling.
Stonywood was closely tied to the Aberdeenshire battalion of James Moir of Stonywood, one of the principal Jacobite commanders in the northeast. Men from this district formed part of Lord Lewis Gordon’s Regiment, many of whom marched south with Prince Charles Edward Stuart’s army and fought in the final campaign of the Rising.
George Forsyth is specifically noted as having “carried arms” at:
Falkirk Muir — 17 January 1746, where Jacobite forces won a narrow but ultimately ineffective victory, and
Culloden — 16 April 1746, the disastrous final battle that crushed the Stuart cause.
The compiler’s note that George was “lurking” when the list was made is particularly poignant. This term was commonly used by officials to indicate a rebel who had not surrendered and was believed to be in hiding—avoiding arrest, imprisonment, transportation, or worse.
So here, in a single terse line, we glimpse the likely fate of this Forsyth:
a common working man from Aberdeenshire, swept into one of Scotland’s last great civil conflicts, surviving two major battles, and then disappearing into concealment in the aftermath of Culloden.
No tartan romance could tell the story more vividly.
George Forsyth may not have been a laird or officer. He was simply listed as a servant. Yet his inclusion reminds us that the Jacobite army was not made up solely of chiefs and noblemen, but also of ordinary Scots whose names survive only in records such as these.
And among them stood a Forsyth.
Source
Scottish History Society, Volume VIII, A List of Persons Concerned in the Rebellion (1890), pages 8–9, from original government returns dated May 1746.
If you’re a Forsyth descendant—or curious if you might be—consider joining the Clan Forsyth Society USA to explore your heritage!