The74th Regiment of (Highland) Foot or74th Regiment of Foot (Argylshire Highlanders) was aBritish Armyline infantryregiment from 1777 to 1784 which was raised to fight in theAmerican Revolutionary War.
In December 1777, John Campbell of Barbreck received letters of service fromKing George III to raise a regiment of infantry in the county of Argyll for service in the regular army.[1] Campbell had held a commission in the old78th, or Fraser's Highlanders during theFrench and Indian War.[2] Most regimental officers were commissioned in 1777,[3] but the first muster of the regiment was not held until April 1778.[4] It was inspected at Glasgow in May 1778 and sailed forHalifax, Nova Scotia, in August 1778.[4]
The regiment's flank companies (thegrenadier andlight infantry companies) joined the main British army in New York in the spring of 1779, while the remainder of the regiment moved to Bagaduce in Massachusetts (now the town ofCastine, Maine) to establish the colonyNew Ireland. The regiment, together with a detachment of the82nd Regiment of Foot, began construction of a post to be calledFort George, which they held through July and early August against attacks by anAmerican expeditionary force from Massachusetts under CommodoreDudley Saltonstall and GeneralSolomon Lovell. On 13 August, a relief force of British ships arrived from New York under the command of CommodoreSir George Collier, and the Americans gave up their siege and withdrew.[4]
The regiment remained at Fort George until January 1784, when the fort was evacuated and the troops returned to Halifax. There they were reunited with the regiment's flank companies; these had served with GeneralSir Henry Clinton inSouth Carolina in 1779 and 1780. The Light Company had also served in Virginia in 1781, ending as part ofLord Cornwallis' army that had surrendered atYorktown in October 1781 and remaining as prisoners until the end of the war in 1783, when they had returned to New York. The regiment, now complete, returned to Great Britain in 1784, landing atPortsmouth and marching from there toStirling, where it was disbanded on 24 May 1784.[4]
A set ofbagpipes, believed to have been played at the mustering of the regiment in 1778 by one Piper MacCorquodale are in the collection of the National Museums of Scotland.[5]
After the war, many of the soldiers settled inSt. Andrews, New Brunswick.