Captain Robert Dryer Perry ^{2 3}

  General Notes:

The Weyer Rhodes Family Tree in Ancestry shows Robert as an United Empire Loyalist.

The Queen's Rangers was a military unit who fought on the Loyalist side during the American War of Independence. After the war they moved to Nova Scotia and disbanded, but were reformed again in Upper Canada before disbanding again, in 1802, just prior to the War of 1812.

FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR (1756-1763): The origins of the Queen's Rangers lay in the French and Indian War, during which France and England fought for territories in the New World. At first, French-Canadian habitants and their Indian allies were quite effective by employing guerrilla tactics against the British regulars. To counter the French tactics, Robert Rogers raised companies of New England frontiersmen for the British and trained them in woodcraft, scouting, and irregular warfare, sending them on raids along the frontiers of French Canada as the Rogers' Rangers. The Rangers soon gained a considerable reputation, particularly in the campaigning in upstate New York around Fort Ticonderoga and Lake Champlain. They also launched a long-range raid to destroy Indian allies in the St. Lawrence valley; gained the first lodgement in the amphibious landings on Cape Breton to capture Louisberg, and took the surrender of the French outposts in the Upper Great Lakes at the conclusion of the war.

AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY WAR (1775-1783): When the American War of Independence broke out in 1775, about fifty Loyalist regiments were raised, including the Butler's Rangers, the King's Royal Regiment, and the Maryland and Pennsylvania Loyalists. Robert Rogers again raised a unit, this time in New York (mostly from Loyalists living in Westchester and Long Island), from western Connecticut, and with men from the Queen's Loyal Virginia Regiment. The new unit was named in honour of Queen Charlotte the wife of King George the Third. It first assembled on Staten Island in August 1776 and grew to 937 officers and men organized into eleven companies of about thirty men each and an additional five troops of cavalry. The unit immediately set about building fortresses and redoubts, including the one that stood at Lookout Place. Rogers did not prove successful in this command and he left the unit in May, 1777. The regiment suffered serious losses at Mamaroneck, Brandywine and Germantown until, on October 15, 1777, John Graves Simcoe was given command.

John Graves Simcoe turned the Queen's Rangers into one of the most successful British regiments in the war. They provided escort and patrol duty around Philadelphia (1777-8); fought in the Pennsylvania campaign; served as rearguard during the British retreat to New York (1778); fought the Stockbridge Militia in The Bronx (1778); fought at Perth Amboy, New Jersey, where Simcoe was captured but freed in a prisoner exchange three months later (1779-80); at Charlestown, South Carolina (1780); in the raid on Richmond, Virginia with Benedict Arnold and in other raids in Virginia (1780-1). The unit was interned at Yorktown. Parts of the unit stationed in New York merged into the King's American Dragoons. On May 2, 1779 the regiment was taken into the American establishment as the 1st American Regiment and was taken into the British establishment on December 25, 1782. In 1783, when the war was ended by the Treaty of Paris, the Queen’s Rangers left New York for Nova Scotia, where it was disbanded. Many of the men from the unit formed Queensbury, New Brunswick on land grants.

Robert married Jemima Gary Washburn, daughter of Simeon Washburn and Jemima Gilbert Gary, on 19 Dec 1771 in Rehoboth, Bristol, Mass USA.¹ (Jemima Gary Washburn was born on 30 Apr 1754 in Attelboro, Rehoboth, Bristol County, Massachusetts, died on 12 Jan 1830 in Ernestown, Lennox & Addington Twp, Upper Canada and was buried in Bath, Ontario ¹.)