Samuel Holland

Samuel Johannes Holland (1728 – 28 December 1801) was a Royal Engineer and first Surveyor General of British North America.

Holland was born in 1728 in Deventer, the Netherlands. He was baptized on 22 September 1729 in the small Lutheran Church in the Dutch town of Deventer in the Province of Overijssel. In 1745, he entered the Dutch artillery and served during the War of the Austrian Succession. He was promoted lieutenant in 1747.

In 1749, Holland married Gertrude Hasse. They had one daughter who is thought to have died in infancy. In 1754, having possibly made contact with the Duke of Richmond and leaving his wife behind in the Netherlands, Holland emigrated to England to seek advancement under the British flag.

In 1756, Holland, probably with Richmond's aid, became a lieutenant in the Royal Americans, coming to British North America where he would spend the rest of his life. Among his first assignments was the preparation of a map of New York province; this map would be widely used for twenty years.

In 1757, during the French and Indian Wars, he was promoted captain lieutenant and assigned to reconnoitre Fort Carillon near Ticonderoga, New York, but in early 1758 he was transferred as assistant engineer to the expedition against Louisbourg. There, Holland made surveys of the surrounding area and prepared plans and give engineering advice under the command of Brigadier-General James Wolfe. Following Louisbourg's capitulation, Holland was strongly commended by Wolfe to the Duke of Richmond.

That winter, Holland and his new pupil, James Cook, drew charts of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and Saint Lawrence River in preparation for an attack on Quebec. He also supervised the construction of Fort Frederick in Saint John, New Brunswick. He was promoted captain in 1759 and participated actively in the siege of Quebec, narrowly escaping death on one occasion when his boats were nearly run down by a schooner.

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