Jacques Marcus Prevost

Jacques Marc, Jacques-Marc, James Marcus or Mark Prevost (1736, Geneva - 1781) was a British Army officer of Swiss origin.

Early ife

He was born in Switzerland to a family originating in Savoy and had eight siblings, including Jacques' two elder brothers Augustine (born 1723) and Jacques (born 1725), who both served in the army of the King of Sardinia then the Dutch Republic.

Seven Years War

Further information: Great Britain in the Seven Years War

Jacques appears to have joined these two brothers in the Netherlands. Augustine was then commissioned as a major, Jacques as a colonel and Jacques Marcus as a captain in the new Royal American Regiment, formed of German and Swiss settlers in the colonies by Great Britain after General Braddock's defeat in western Pennsylvania in the French and Indian Wars in 1755 and with the threat of war with France looming. The three were sent to North America when this war broke out and Jacques Marc was wounded at the Battle of Carillon in New York in 1758. Augustine was also seriously wounded (with General James Wolfe's army near Quebec) that year, and the two brothers recuperated in New York City that year, with Augustine going on to serve further with the Royal American Regiment, especially in the Caribbean, rising to lieutenant colonel. In New York Jacques Marc first met Theodosia Stillwell Bartow.

When his wounds had healed, in 1761 Jacques Marcus went with Henry Bouquet, a Swiss colonel in the Royal American Regiment, to set up a British post at Presque Isle (present-day Erie, Pennsylvania) and show a presence at Fort Niagara. Next Prevost was assigned to command a body of troops in New York City but was soon put on half pay after the French defeat and the reduction in military activity. Whilst there he married Theodosia in Trinity Church in Manhattan in 1763. His next assignment was to command a detachment of Bouquet's force at Fort Loudoun on the Pennsylvania frontier fighting against Ohio Native American towns in the Muskingum Valley before returning to his wife in New York in 1765. He then went back onto half pay before his unit was posted to the West Indies in 1772, though he again returned to New York from 1773. By then the couple were living in The Hermitage.

American War of Independence

On the outbreak of the American War of Independence he was a lieutenant-colonel living in Paramus, New Jersey, and after Savannah's capture in December 1778 he was for a short time British governor of Georgia in succession to Archibald Campbell. Accompanying a body of troops to Jamaica in 1781, he died of wounds suffered earlier in the war later that year. Weeks after his death his wife became involved with Aaron Burr, later marrying him.

External links

• http://www.thehermitage.org/prevosts_text.html
• http://shapiro.anthro.uga.edu/Lamar/PDFfiles/Publication%2064.pdf

Persondata
Name	Prevost
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1736
Place of birth
Date of death	1781
Place of death