I represent John Lorimer. I was the Surgeon of His Majesty’s 31st Regiment of Foot, and head medical officer at the hospital in Pensacola. I aided General Haldimand’s efforts to improve the health of the soldiers by imposing some order on the hospital, and strenuously advised the brass to stop sending new troops to the hellish climate of the Gulf Coast in the middle of summer, when diseases like yellow fever were taking soldiers down as soon as they set foot on shore. I also served as a magistrate in Pensacola. I was elected to represent Campbelltown in the House of Commons for the provincial General Assembly in 1766 and 1767, and to represent Mobile in the fourth Assembly in 1769. While I was representing Campbelltown, I lived in Pensacola. The only reason I lived in Mobile later was because General Haldimand insisted I provide medical care to the garrison of Mobile which, in Haldimand’s opinion, need it more than Pensacola. In fact, I used my membership in the Assembly to avoid living in Mobile. I was a botanist in my spare time, and did enough observations of the natural state of West Florida that Governor Chester recommended I be given the salary once received by the naturalist Bernard Romans after he left the colony. I determined the longitude of Pensacola with calculations based on the eclipses of the satellites of Jupiter. In 1769 I was elected to membership of the prestigious American Philosophical Society. I and my wife were great friends of George Gauld and his wife, and it may be that we were acquainted before we both went to West Florida. At the surrender of Pensacola in May 1781, I became a prisoner of war with the rest of the survivors of the siege. I and my assistants continued our work, caring for the wounded of both sides of the war. Then I went to New York with the rest of the prisoners. I remained there until the end of the war in1783, when the last British troops left for London. I died there in 1795.
Sources: 3, 5, 7, 13, 21, 35; 6