18 Facts About John Montresor

Captain John Montresor was a British Army officer and cartographer who served in North America during the American War of Independence.

John Montresor was in England between 1746 and 1750 and attended Westminster School.

John Montresor learned the principles of engineering from his father and in his later teens served as assistant engineer to his father at Gibraltar.

John Montresor remained in America, serving along the Mohawk River and at Fort Edward and then accompanying British forces to Halifax.

John Montresor was twice sent overland from Quebec to Boston with dispatches, on one of these journeys, in a mid-winter blizzard, being reduced to eating belt and shoe leather in order to avoid starvation.

John Montresor designed and built fortifications on the Niagara River at Fort Niagara and Fort Erie as well as a series of blockhouses and an early gravity railroad along the Niagara Portage between 1762 and 1764.

John Montresor purchased an island in New York Harbor which would be called Montresor's Island.

John Montresor was appointed chief engineer in America and captain in late 1775.

John Montresor was sent to the rebel lines under flag of truce to report the event and conveyed Hale's last words to William Hull.

John Montresor participated at Brandywine later that year, and accompanied the army to Philadelphia where he launched the attack that destroyed his own Mud Island defences.

John Montresor directed the construction of new defences for the city, including the first pontoon bridge at Gray's Ferry on the Schuylkill River.

John Montresor purchased an estate at Belmont, Kent, had a residence at Portland Place, London, and he served as director of the French Hospital.

John Montresor toured Europe in 1785 and 1786, visiting France, Germany and Switzerland.

John Montresor returned to England with her husband, and survived him, dying 28 June 1828, at Rose Hill, Kent.

Likewise, he made a small grant for the support of the child of the daughter of a local English farmer, of which John Montresor was the father.

John Montresor's tombstone names her Montezuma, while an 1858 history written using family information calls her Frances Montuzan, relating that her father was a British colonel killed in the French and Indian War.

John Montresor has gained a certain notoriety beyond his historical role due to the writings of his first-cousin Susanna Haswell Rowson.

One of the main characters in her popular novel Charlotte Temple, John Montraville, was based, at least in part, on Montresor.