New to the Forum!!

[OC Richard]

My name is Lance and I live in Mt. Gilead Ohio.

Welcome neighbour! Well I live in California now but as a youth moved back and forth between my native West Virginia and California multiple times.

I get back there fairly often and just before the Covid shutdown I attended the Ohio Scottish Games in Wellington.

I've also attended the Dublin (Ohio) Irish Festival which is amazing.

I enjoy 18th century reenacting and came across this forum as I was researching my new persona as a 42nd Highlander during the revolutionary war.

We have members with a huge amount of knowledge about that subject.

I'm not one of them! I have general knowlege of the histories and uniforms of the Scottish Highland regiments but much of my information is older. New research sheds more light on a regular basis.

About the tartans of that period we are very lucky to have Peter MacDonald who has done and continues to do a great amount of original research into early tartans.

He has published a reprint, with notes, of the 1819 Wilsons of Bannockburn Key Pattern Book which gives the specific thread-counts of a large number of military tartans going back into the 18th century.

The Black Watch during the American Revolution evidently wore canvas breeches rather than kilts on campaign, but for things like that I'm not an expert.

DNA over the years has turned in to a lot of things Scottish, about 32%

As you might be aware Ancestry.com revises their Pie Charts on a fairly regular basis and a couple years ago most people's "Scottish" percentage went much higher while other percentages, especially "Irish", went much lower.

Over the years my "Irish" has steadily declined from 35% to 7% while my "Scottish" has steadily increased, now standing at over 50%. Who can say, but a couple years from now these numbers could reverse again.

I have found my first direct Scottish ancestor in the US fought with the British

And ironically I have two direct ancestors, one Scottish-born and one English-born, who fought together in the Virginia Militia prior to the war, and in Washington's army during the war.