Heritage and the Early Years

This story is about a great patriot who gave all he had to America's fight for freedom and democracy. It is also an updated account of an important eighteenth and nineteenth-century Scottish family in world history, which traces its heritage back over one thousand years to the Saint Clair's of France, which became the St. Clair's and the Sinclair's of Scotland, England, and America.

The St. Clair French-Norman ancestry in Scotland was the result of the Norman conquest of France and the British Isles, which included Scotland, in the eleventh century by William the Conqueror. William, son of the Comte de Saint Clair of France, a close relative of William the Conqueror, settled in Scotland in 1066. William became the acknowledged patriarch of all the Saint Clair's in the kingdom.

There is disagreement on the date of Arthur St. Clair's birth; it was either March 23 or April 3 in 1734, 1736, or 1737. However, it's most often reported that he was born in Thurso, Caithness, Scotland, on March 23, 1734.

Arthur St. Clair's own Scottish lineage traces back nine generations to the joining of two noble Scottish families, the Saint Clair's and the Sutherlands, through the marriage of John Earl Caithness Sinclair and Elizabeth Sutherland in 1500. In 1533 they had their only son, George Earl, who, during the forty-nine years before he was laid to rest in Rosslyn Chapel, fathered seven children. After seven generations, this lineage produced Arthur St. Clair. The Sinclair's built and often defended Girnigoe Castle in Caithness County and both Rosslyn Castle and Rosslyn Chapel in Midlothian County.

Research indicated that all St. Clair's and Sinclair's are descended from the original Saint Clair's who came to Scotland from the Bass-Normandy Region of France. The English often derived the St. Clair name into "Sinkler." The names St. Clair and Sinclair were derived from Saint Clair and the French-Norman area from which they came, "Saint-Clair-sur-L'Elle." Both Scottish family strongholds began in the Orkney Isles of North Scotland, in Caithness, the northernmost county in Scotland.

We should note here that studies of this family are ongoing and that theories under study reach back to AD 600. Eight years ago, Steve Sinclair, of New Jersey, and Stan Sinclair, of Tennessee, cofounded a St. Clair/Sinclair DNA research effort that has attracted a team of researchers worldwide. According to Steve Sinclair, before Ellis Island, there were six major points of immigration through which St. Clairs and Sinclairs passed into North America: Pennsylvania/ Philadelphia, New Hampshire/Boston/New York, Halifax/Quebec, New Jersey, Virginia, and the Carolinas. Said Steve Sinclair:

"Arthur St. Clair was fortunate in that he had been able to make a choice to come to North America. Of course, as a British officer, he earned his passage to North America by fighting the French and Indians in Canada for five years. Others fled Scotland because of its wars or famine, selling themselves as indentured servants for many years to pay for their passage. Still others convicted of crimes in Scotland often saw their prison sentence take the form of indefinite servitude to plantation owners in North America."

Perhaps because of his ancestry, and the fact that he was tall and raised as a gentleman, Arthur St. Clair is said to have carried himself with an aristocratic bearing, not unlike George Washington. Some even say that young Arthur was born wealthy. It does not appear that this is true. There are many lines of Sinclair's and St. Clair's who came from an aristocratic history, but not all were wealthy. It is generally held that Arthur St. Clair was of old aristocratic Saint Clair descent, specifically the Sinclair's of Lybster and Scotscalder both of whom used the spelling, St. Clair.

Arthur's father, William, was the youngest of his family. Traditionally, even if there was family wealth, there was never much left for the youngest. So William led a modest, uneventful life as a merchant in a small town. He died at an early age, and young Arthur's education and upbringing were guided closely by his mother, Margaret. She placed great value on their family heritage. She managed their meager income and took charge of Arthur's education. She took great pains to prepare him for the study of medicine at the University of Edinburgh and to develop in him what she perceived to be the best qualities of his noted ancestry.

After university, young Arthur was indentured to the celebrated doctor William Hunter, one of London's first surgeons. Arthur was well on his way to a fulfilling medical practice when two things happened. First, his mother died in the winter of 1756–57. Second, the Duke of Cumberland was recruiting troops and seeking officer material from men in the professions and the universities. The French and Indians were threatening British colonial policies in Canada and would soon be doing the same in America, and they needed to be stopped.

Perhaps his decision on the military was prompted by his historic warrior genes, dating back to his St. Clair and Sinclair ancestors. In any case, Arthur decided on a career in the British military. He bought out the remainder of his indenture from Dr. Hunter, which he combined with a small inheritance after his mother's death. With this and the influence of a family friend, he obtained an ensign's rank in the Royal American Regiment of Foot, known as the Sixteenth Regiment. While unknown to him at the time, with that decision, he was also destined to become the patriarch of one of the largest St. Clair/Sinclair clans in America.

In 1758, St. Clair sailed with Admiral Edward Boscawen's fleet headed to North America. He was under the command of Major General Jeffery Amherst, who was charged with leading one of the last campaigns of the Seven Years' War against the French and Indians at Louisbourg, Nova Scotia. Ironically, St. Clair's great Scottish ancestor Prince Henry Sinclair had first set foot on Nova Scotia 360 years earlier. Louisbourg was taken from the French, and it's said that St. Clair distinguished himself in battle, demonstrating his courage almost immediately. On at least one occasion, young Arthur was said to have picked up his unit's fallen battle flag and led his unit up a hill in the face of fire. General Amherst was called to England, and St. Clair was reassigned to General James Wolfe, for whom he reportedly also gave a good account of himself in the battles of the Plains of Abraham, or the Siege of Quebec, after which the British victory essentially served to vanquish the French in Canada.

St. Clair's five years of battle experience during Canada's French and Indian War not only first tested his courage, but also gave him the resolve to eventually devote his life to America's fight for freedom from Great Britain's increased taxation and oppression of the American colonists.

Whether Arthur, at twenty, really had the perspective from which to consider how rewarding a career in medicine might be or, for that matter, what position and status he and his future family might achieve, we can only speculate. Had he pursued medicine, he and his family might have been more comfortable financially and led a far different professional and personal life. Moreover, since he did live eighty-four years on this earth, consider how many more years he and his family might have enjoyed together had he become a doctor and practiced in England or Scotland.

Instead, he chose to endure the intense stress of forty years as an American military officer and statesman. At first his work in American public life did earn him some status and financial reward in Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, his later achievements and contributions to America's independence were often unappreciated and were extremely hard on him and his family, both personally and financially.

1. Centuries later, on June 6, 1944, the Normandy beaches of this area became known as the site where the Allied armies launched their D-Day offensive against the German occupation of France.

2. For current updates about St. Clair/Sinclair family, DNA-related discovery, contact saintclair1398@gmail.com.

3. Because of what was to become a life-long military and public service relationship between Arthur St. Clair and George Washington, it should be noted that, while Lieutenant St. Clair was fighting with the British against the French in Canada, Colonel Washington, as head of the Virginia Militia, was fighting the French in Pennsylvania with British General Braddock while also serving as his adjutant. Although they would not actually meet until some 14 years later, it is reasonable to assume that they at least knew of one another.

St. Clair's Legendary Scottish Ancestors.

Many of the St. Clair and Sinclair families in Scotland trace back to the Cistercian monastic order and its order of warrior monks, the Knights Templar. The Templars were established as the pope's private army and as defenders of the Catholic faith by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, an abbot of the Cistercian monastery in Burgundy, France. He developed and presented the rules for this order to the pope in 1128 at the Council of Troy in France. For most of the next three centuries the order became much more than just warrior monks and defenders of the faith. They became the protectors of travelers from Jerusalem and eventually one of the most powerful financial organizations in Europe at the time.

The Knights Templar were not shrinking violets. They wore the white robes of the Cistercian monks emblazoned with a large red cross which was a symbol of martyrdom. Dying in combat was considered a great honor and assured one's place in heaven. The Templars were well funded from the start. This was due, in part, to grants from the pope. Funds also came each time Cistercian monks gave up whatever personal wealth they had, as part of their vow of poverty. Some then also chose to become Knights Templar. With such capital, the Templars were eventually able to create Europe's first credit and banking system. Originally, this was for the purpose of protecting the wealth of travelers from being stolen along the road by robbers. Later, the Templars began issuing credit to travelers, the amount for which they would receive at the end of their trip. This credit would be redeemed from the Templars by the travelers at their destinations, probably with a service fee.

Even though the Templars flourished for centuries, their credit business began to grow even more as royalty began borrowing funds when their coffers ran short. However, not unlike many organizations that get too big today, there was trouble ahead for the Templars.

The most notable borrower was Philip IV, King of France (1285-1314) who became greatly indebted to the Templars. This made him envious of their wealth and power, which is probably why the king decided not to pay the Templars back. Since both the Pope and the Templars were based in France, King Philip had no difficulty ordering Pope Clement to dissolve the Knights Templar. Before doing so, however, the king called a meeting of the heads of the Templars, ostensibly for a legitimate purpose, on Friday, October 13, 1306. While the head knights were contained in the castle, the king sent his troops throughout France to destroy what was left of each of their strongholds, killing the remaining Templar monks and searching for treasure. The unsuspecting head knights at the meeting were then seized upon, tortured in the hope of learning the location of their treasure, and then executed.

One of the Templar legends surrounds the final recorded act of the Order's history, the burning of the last Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, in March 1314. As the smoke from the slow fire choked the life from his body, Jacques de Molay is said to have issued an imprecation from the flames. According to tradition, he called his persecutors—Pope Clement and King Philip—to join him and account for themselves before the court of God within the year. Within a month Pope Clement was dead, supposedly from a sudden onslaught of dysentery. By the end of the year Philip was dead as well, from causes that remain unclear to this day. There is of course no need to look for supernatural explanations. The Templars possessed great expertise in the use of poisons. And there certainly were enough people about—refugee knights traveling incognito, the sympathizers of the Order, or relatives of persecuted brethren—to exact the appropriate vengeance. Nevertheless, the apparent fulfillment of the Grand Master's curse lent credence to belief in the Order's occult powers. Nor did the curse end there. According to legend, it was to cast a pall over the French royal line far into the future. And thus echoes of the Templars' supposed mystical power reverberated down the centuries.

Although much fiction has also been created about finding the knights' treasure in many different forms and places, no treasure has ever been found. It is generally accepted that this massacre in 1306 is the source of the centuries-old superstition that Friday the thirteenth is a day of bad luck ... it certainly was for the Knights Templar.

Arthur St. Clair may well have been the patriarch of one of America's largest St. Clair/Sinclair families, nearly a dozen generations up to the present, but he was certainly not the first Sinclair to journey to North America from Scotland. That honor belongs to his ancestor, Prince Henry Sinclair, the first Earl of Orkney, who, in June 1398, preceded Arthur's arrival in North America by more than three centuries.

Prince Henry may not even have been the first! Evidence continues to surface that before Sinclair, the Vikings, the Chinese, and even the Egyptians may have sailed to the Americas.

To plan his voyage, Prince Henry Sinclair sought out the Zeno brothers of Venice, renowned naval and navigation experts at the time, to map the North Atlantic region. He first sent Nicolo Zeno in 1393 to draw a map of the North Atlantic region and also to survey Greenland. Zeno returned two years later, but he soon died of prolonged overexposure to the Arctic weather. After many years of preparation, Sinclair set out on his voyage to the New World with twelve ships and a crew of one hundred in 1398.

While some contend that the voyage was purely exploratory, others say that the voyage was to find a new home for the surviving Knights Templar who had been shielded in Scotland from persecution by France for generations. Still others say the voyage's purpose was really to establish new trade sources for Scotland and other neighboring countries subjected to the monopolistic practices of the Hanseatic League, also known as the Hansa. The league was a north German–led trade association of merchants that had begun in the cities of Hamburg and Luebeck, in Germany, and had flourished from 1350 to 1600. By the turn of the fourteenth century, the league included merchant organizations in one hundred north European and Baltic cities, extending to Russia in the east and London, England, in the west.

One report says that the predominantly Catholic population of Europe consumed a great amount of fish because there were so many religious holidays and fish was plentiful in the Baltic Sea, especially herring. This in turn brought about the need for salt to preserve the herring, which fortunately for the north Germans was available in nearby Kiel. Salt was also found in abundance in Greenland, which was the first place where Sinclair landed. They then moved on to Newfoundland and finally landed in Nova Scotia, Canada, after which they explored America's New England states of Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Admiral Antonio Zeno, Nicolo's brother, became Prince Henry's navigator and recorder of the ship's log, which has endured for over six hundred years as the Zeno Narratives. His brother's earlier "Zeno Map" of the North Atlantic was so accurate that cartographers and sailors of all nations used it for hundreds of years. Even aerial maps of today have dozens of points in common with the Zeno Map.