Raised in April 1794 and drafted into the 53rd Regiment in September 1795, the 109th Aberdeenshire Regiment might readily be described as one of the more obscure highland units. In its short existence however it re-opened a 20 year old feud which was in itself born out of hundreds of years of local rivalries in North-East Scotland.

For generations local politics in the area had been dominated by the Gordon family, who saw themselves as the natural leaders of the province, but who not unnaturally perhaps found themselves opposed not only by the lesser lairds, but also more often than not by the Aberdeen town council, both keen to maintain their independence. Matters had come to something of a head in the Civil War but the old rivalries were still alive one hundred and fifty years later.

They had indeed been exacerbated during the American War. In 1759 the 89th Highlanders had been raised in Aberdeenshire by the Duke of Gordon's mother, and commanded by his stepfather Staats Long Morris. At the outbreak of the American War she had exerted herself once more to raise a company for Fraser's 71st Highlanders [1] and the Duke himself subsequently raised the Northern Fencibles, a home defence battalion. A marching regiment was then contemplated but to his fury he was thwarted by Colonel William Gordon of Fyvie who obtained Letters of Service for the raising of the 81st Aberdeenshire Highlanders in December 1777.

One of the first officers gazetted to the 81st was Captain Alexander Leith [2] and in 1782 his younger brotherjames, who had earlier served with the 21st also obtained a Captaincy. The regiment was disbanded however at the end of the American War without having seen service but Leith by a fortunate inheritance changed his name to Leith-Hay and subsequently became one of the Deputy Lieutenants of Aberdeenshire, a position which he was to exploit to the full. [3]

On the 8th March 1794 Leith-Hay, still a half-pay officer wrote in these terms to Sir George Yonge;

In the beginning of the war I offered to raise a regiment of Highlanders and will still undertake to raise one on on the same establishment and terms with those now going on in Scotland. [4]

Not for the last time the outbreak of war had revealed serious deficiencies in the army and discovered an even more desperate want of men. As usual the War Office panicked and responded by granting commissions to raise new regiments and new independent companies and even permitted the formation of units such as Vere Hunt's 135th Foot which existed solely to provide existing corps with drafts of recruits. Leith-Hay therefore had little difficulty in obtaining Letters of Service for a marching regiment on 2nd April 1794 and at once returned home to begin recruiting.

The results were not without interest.

The Marquis of Huntly, eldest son of the Duke of Gordon, had earlier obtained Letters of Service for the 100th Regiment - later to become the 92nd Gordon Highlanders - on the 10th of February 1794 and not unnaturally expected to gain the better part of his recruits in Aberdeenshire and the City of Aberdeen itself, as his father had in great measure done the previous year when he raised the 6th Northern Fencibles. To the dismay of his agents however, and in particular Captain William Finlason [5] the granting of Letters of Service to Leith-Hay threw these plans into confusion.

Finlason had suggested that the 100th might as an aid to recruitment be entitled the Aberdeenshire regiment and was mortified to hear on the 11th March that Leith-Hay had settled upon that designation. Having been "thwarted" on that score Finlason then began to worry that the bounty being offered to recruits for the 100th might be too small. While his paranoia was to become ever more acute with each setback [or imagined one] the fact of the matter was that the raising of the two regiments brought out old rivalries - in which initially at least the Gordon faction was defeated.

Although branches of the family were widely scattered over Aberdeenshire and the rest of the North-East of Scotland they were chiefly concentrated in and around an area known as Strathbogie on the Aberdeenshire/Banffshire border, though the Duke's seat was at Gordon Castle outside Fochabers. The family had for hundreds of years looked to dominate the North-East in the same manner as did the Campbells Argyllshire but unlike the latter had found substantial opposition, particularly in eastern Aberdeenshire. Not surprisingly therefore Leith-Hay was supported strongly in that quarter and at meetings of the freeholders and Commissioners of Supply held in early and mid April 1794 there was general agreement to direct their efforts towards recruiting men for the 109th in preference to Huntly's 100th.

Finlason noted that recruiting for the 109th began in Aberdeen on the 1st April and gloomily reported great enthusiasm:

"The town is in a roar. We shall catch nothing till it settles. Nothing less than 30 guineas is spoken of A bounty from the County will soon be noticed for the Aberdeenshire Regiment. Lord Huntly's friends must equal it and not be outdone. For one emissary we have on foot, they have a hundred. The whole town is for them."

The rumour as to an additional bounty being provided by the "county" was only too true although as it turned out things went so well that Leith-Hay was confident enough to decline the money, reckoning the Government grant to be sufficient. It did not help of course that Huntly himself took no part in the recruiting [though his mother, famously, did] and another of Finlason's dismal epistles, dated the 6th April, gives an idea of the strength of the backing afforded to the 109th;

All people here are acting for [Leith-Hay], and the connection made with Delgaty by his brother being second Major is powerful in Aberdeenshire I hear Pitfour and Allardyce assisted strongly.

On the 14th Finlason reported "The whole town high and low are at work for the Aberdeen Regiment". Huntly did not put in an appearance until the regiment was actually embodied at the Castlehill Barracks in Aberdeen on the 24th of June and by then it was too late. Finlason obtained only 87 men in all and complained that for five weeks his house had seemed more like a gin shop. Far from being the Aberdeenshire regiment which he had hoped most of the 100th's men had perforce to be found in Invernessshire - in bitter competition with the recruiters for other highland regiments - and elsewhere in the highlands. As against 240 Invernessshire men only 124 of the original Gordon Highlanders were enlisted from Aberdeenshire.

By September the Aberdeenshire Regiment too was complete and enlisted for the most part in the lowlands of Aberdeenshire by the exertions of the local landowners. Inspected and passed at Aberdeen on 5th September 1794, by Sir Hector Monro, [who had commanded the 89th in India] colours were presented to it by the county. It was then ordered south and quartered at Southampton by the end of October.

In April 1795 the 109th went to Jersey but by July had returned to Southampton, joining a force of 20 regiments assembling on Nursling Common for a "descent" on the West Indies. In the following month however the bubble burst as commonsense re-asserted itself in the War Office and the decision was taken to reduce all the regiments numbered over 100. [6]

The soldiers were then drafted into older corps to bring them up to strength. All too frequently men from one of the disbanded regiments might find themselves scattered through a number of units - the 97th for example had its flank companies posted to the 42nd and its bat- talion companies dispersed among the Marines - but others were drafted entire. Some units indeed mutinied but although strenuous protests were made by Leith-Hay and "the county" the 109th passed peacefully out of existence on the 24th September 1795.

[Interestingly the Sergeant Major, Hugh Douglas, was promoted to Ensign on the same day, thus securing Half Pay for him]. All of the soldiers went into the 53rd [whose "Shropshire" title must have rung hollow for some time afterwards] as remarkably did a number of the 109th's officers, which probably assisted the peaceful transition, most of them going over in early September;

Lieutenant William Brocky
[Surgeon's Mate]
John Fraser
William Grant
Andrew Leith-Hay
George Leslie
Thomas Leslie
Arthur Lloyd
William Ponsonby
John Vispre
Ensign John Grant
Alexander Leith
William Leith
John Smith