Jeanette13 - about typos, i make my fair share of them, but i want to ask you about another possible typo. you posted, "He left Durness in 1778 to join the 71st Regt. He says that Rob Donn was the last person he shook hands with in Durness at the top of the Balloch Mor." My 3x great-grandfather, the younger brother of Quartermaster John Ross, was born in 1775, and was named John because at that time (1775) his brother John had been gone to the army for several years with no word, his parents feared that he was dead, and they named their next boy John. Based on the logic of naming a second child John, I assume the departure of the first John had to be a few years before the birth of the second John in 1775. There is another way to work out the departure date, but it would take discovery of the date of his enlistment in the army, and at the moment I don't know how to hunt for army records. Anyway, can you look back at the diary and confirm that the sentence as written says John Ross left Durness in 1778? I love the sentence "Rob Donn was the last person he shook hands with in Durness at the top of the Balloch Mor." It is a great first sentence for a novel. If you put that sentence in a search on Google, the first hit is this chat.
