McGregor, John

From: An Island Refuge- Loyalists and Disbanded Troops on The Island of Saint John, The Abegweit Branch of UELAC, 1983

  • JOHN McGREGOR, the first McGregor to settle on the Island of Saint John, was born in Perthshire, Scotland c. 1745. It is told that his father died when John was nine years old. We know little about his early life, except that he served an apprenticeship as a weaver.
  • Family tradition maintains that John left Scotland because of the combination of severe oppression by the English and John’s being in trouble with the authorities. A relative, Robert Campbell, was one of the earliest promoters of the settlement of the Island of Saint John, and this may have accounted for young John’s choice of the Island as his new home.
  • John McGregor was twenty-five years old and unmarried when, on April 8, 1770, he sailed aboard the Falmouth from Perth, Scotland, to Stanhope, the Island of Saint John. It is believed that John may have married a daughter of Neil Shaw of Covehead, but that is not certain. This wife died childless, or at least had no surviving issue. Information on John McGregor is very brief; however, a muster roll of “Discharged and Disbanded Soldiers and other Loyalists”, who arrived from Shelburne, Nova Scotia on September 17, 1784, contained the name of John McGregor, age thirty-five of the 42nd Regiment. He was issued a grant of one hundred acres in Lot 56. The 42nd Regiment, The Black Watch, sailed from Greenoch for New York on September 14, 1776. This indicated that John enlisted in Scotland, and means that either John returned to Scotland or the information concerning the Falmouth is incorrect. Further research will be necessary to confirm this matter.