Richard Stovin

Who is Richard Stovin?

Lieutenant-General Richard Stovin was a British Army officer during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He originally joined the army as an ensign in 1780, and saw service in the American War of Independence, where he may have been taken prisoner after the Battle of Yorktown. After the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars, he saw service with a force sent to invade French colonies in the Caribbean, and was taken prisoner in 1794 at Guadeloupe. Released after two years in captivity, he later commanded his regiment in the Netherlands, in the Helder Expedition of 1799, and on garrison duties in the Mediterranean and in India. In the War of 1812 he was appointed to command a division in the forces in Canada, where an island in the St. Lawrence river was named after him.