Early Life and Career
Mercer was born near Rosehearty, at the manse of Pitsligo Kirk, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, to Presbyterian Minister, Reverend William Mercer of Pitsligo Parish Church and Ann Monro. At 15, he attended the University of Aberdeen, Marischal College, studying medicine and graduated a Doctor. He was assistant surgeon in the army of Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745, and was present at the Battle of Culloden when Charles' Army was crushed on April 16, 1746, and any survivors were hunted down and killed. As a fugitive in his own homeland in 1747, Mercer fled Scotland after months in hiding. He bought his way onto a ship and moved to America, settling near what is now Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, and practiced medicine for eight years.
Read more about this topic: Hugh Mercer
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or career:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“Some men have a necessity to be mean, as if they were exercising a faculty which they had to partially neglect since early childhood.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“In this loveless everyday life eroticism is a substitute for love.”
—Henri Lefebvre (b. 1901)
“Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)