Oliver De Lancey (British Army officer, died 1822)

The De Lanceys had been established in the British Province of New York by his grandfather, a wealthy Huguenot of Caen in Normandy who had emigrated to America on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and bought large estates; the family ranked among the wealthiest and most powerful citizens of the colony.

[2] When the American Revolutionary War broke out, in 1775, De Lancey was at once despatched to his native colony to make arrangements for the accommodation and remounting of his own regiment and of the royal artillery, then under orders for active service.

He found on his arrival there that his father had warmly espoused the royalist cause, and in the following year the elder Oliver de Lancey raised and equipped at his own expense three battalions of loyalist Americans, which he commanded with the rank of brigadier-general.

[8] De Lancey then joined the staff as deputy quartermaster-general to the force sent to South Carolina, and after serving at the capture of Charleston he became aide-de-camp to Lord Cornwallis, and eventually succeeded Major John André as adjutant-general to the army at New York.

[8][10] In 1794 he received the post of Barrack-Master-General,[11] with an income of £1,500 a year, and on 20 May 1795 George III gave him the colonelcy of the 17th Dragoons, "spontaneously, to the great surprise of the said De Lancey, and I believe of every other person".