John Harris Cruger (1738-2 June 1807) was a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army during the American Revolutionary War. A New York loyalist, he fought in the Southern Theater of the war against the Patriots, commanding the British at the Siege of Ninety-Six on 22 May-19 June 1781.
Biography[]
John Cruger was born in 1738 in New York City, New York, and he sided with the loyalists during the American Revolution. Cruger was given command of 550 loyalists from New York, New Jersey, and South Carolina during the American Revolutionary War, and he conducted one of the most brilliant defensive operations of the entire war during the Siege of Ninety-Six after assuming command of Fort Ninety-Six in early August 1780. Cruger refused to surrender to Nathanael Greene's Continental Army force, and he defended the fort from June to July 1781. No reinforcements arrived for him, so he decided to evacuate the fort and demolished the town and the supplies there. He died in London, England in 1807.