# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Haviland, William

​HAVILAND, WILLIAM (1718–1784), general, colonel 45th foot, son of Captain Peter Haviland, was born in 1718 in Ireland, where his father was serving in a marching regiment. On 26 Dec. 1739 he was appointed ensign in Spottiswoode's, otherwise Gooch's regiment, a corps of American provincials ranking as the old 43rd foot, and broken up in 1742, with which he appears to have served at Carthagena and Porto Bello. Subsequently he obtained a company in the 27th Inniskilling foot, commanded by Colonel William (afterwards Lord) Blakeney [q. v.], which also had been at Porto Bello. Haviland acted as aide-de-camp to Blakeney at the defence of Stirling Castle and elsewhere in ​1745–6, and was afterwards some years in Ireland with the 27th, in which he became major in 1750, and lieutenant-colonel in 1752. In 1757 he took the regiment out to America. He commanded at Fort Edward during the winter of 1757–8 (Parkman, ii. chap. i.), and was with Abercromby at Ticonderoga in 1758, and in various operations under Amherst in 1759–60. In the latter year he commanded a force of 3,400 men, including provincials and Indians, despatched from Crown Point to force a way by Lake Champlain, which was defended by a strong French post at Isle aux Noix, and to effect a junction with the armies under Murray and Amherst converging on Montreal, a service successfully accomplished (ib. pp. 361–82). Haviland possessed considerable mechanical genius, and was the inventor of a species of pontoon for passing rapids. His fertility of resource is said to have largely contributed to the success of the difficult operations in which he was employed. After the fall of Montreal he went to the West Indies, and was second in command at the reduction of Martinique, and commanded a brigade at the rich conquest of Havana in 1762. He became a major-general, and in 1767 was appointed colonel 45th foot. He became lieutenant-general in 1772, and general in 1783. During the American war of independence he held command at Whitehaven for a short time, and in 1779, during the alarms of a French invasion, he was appointed to command the western district, with headquarters at Plymouth.
Haviland married, first, Caroline, daughter of Colonel Francis and Lady Elizabeth Lee, and granddaughter of the first Earl of Lichfield; she died in Ireland in 1751, having had no issue; secondly, Salusbury, daughter of Thomas Aston of Beaulieu, county Louth, by whom he had a son, Colonel Thomas Haviland of Penn, who died in 1793, and a daughter. Haviland, whose seat was Penn, in Burnham parish, Buckinghamshire, was a near neighbour and intimate personal friend of Burke, with whose family he was connected through his second marriage. As general commanding the western district he was remarked for his openhanded hospitality to officers of both services, and he died comparatively poor at Penn on 16 Sept. 1784. There is a mural tablet to his memory at Burnham parish church.
[A genealogy will be found under ‘Burke of Beaconsfield’ (Haviland-Burke) in Burke's Landed Gentry, 1868 ed., but not in later editions. For other details see Home Office Mil. Entry Book, vol. xvi.; Printed Lists of Army in Ireland, entitled Quarters of the Army in Ireland, 1742–52, in Brit. Museum; F. Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe, ii. chap. i. and 361–82, and marginal references given that work; Gent. Mag. 1784, pt. ii. 718–19; Lipscombe's Buckinghamshire, iii. 292, and (Mrs. Haviland) 1202.]
H. M. C.