Jamie Fraser’s father Brian („Brian Dubh“) is born as an illegitimate son of Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, „The Old Fox“. His mother is Davina Porter, a maid in the Fraser of Lovat’s keep.
Brian dies before Outlander begins but is mentioned there several times.
In Written in My Own Heart’s Blood Roger and Brianna MacKenzie meet Brian when they inadvertently travel to the year 1739.
Jamie Fraser’s mother Ellen MacKenzie is born. She is the oldest child of „Red Jacob“ MacKenzie, clan chief of the MacKenzies of Leoch.
Colum and Dougal MacKenzie are her brothers, her sisters Jocasta MacKenzie Cameron Innes, Flora and Janet MacKenzie.
Lallybroch is built. This is mentioned in Chapter 27 of Outlander.
There are questions about this date, though; it is probably only the laying of the foundations. In Chapter 34 of Drums of Autumn it says 1716, the year Brian and Ellen move in, and their oldest son William is born. In the first Epilogue of A Breath of Snow and Ashes, Brianna says 1721 – that is the year of Jamie’s birth and has to be a continuity glitch.
On May 1 James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser is born.
(In Chapter 58 of The Fiery Cross Jamie counts his blessings on his 50th birthday.)
Lord John Grey is born.
Ellen Fraser dies giving birth to her fourth child.
Jamie spends a few months fostering with Dougal MacKenzie’s family as a fourteen-year-old.
In November Roger and William Buccleigh MacKenzie travel to the past from 1980. Looking for „Jeremiah“ MacKenzie, they end up in the same time where Roger’s father Jeremiah „Jerry“ is stranded. They meet Jerry as well as Jamie’s father Brian Fraser, Dougal MacKenzie and Jack Randall. Jamie is not in Lallybroch because he is studying in Paris.
Written in My Own Heart’s Blood
A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows
Brianna and her children find Roger, who has travelled to the „wrong“ time, in Lallybroch. They have to decide whether the gangsters two hundred years in the future are more dangerous than the war thirty-five years from now – and they opt for the nearer future. They take a ship from Scotland to America and use the stone circle on Ocracoke to travel to 1779 – to Jamie and Claire, whom they find in Fraser’s Ridge.
Written in My Own Heart’s Blood
Jamie meets Captain Jack Randall for the first time. He is arrested and sentenced for obstruction. When Brian Fraser witnesses his brutal whipping in Fort William, he suffers a stroke and dies a short time later.
Jamie escapes to France, where he serves as a mercenary.
Jamie’s sister Jenny marries Ian Murray. Their first son James Fraser Murray is born.
May 2: Claire wakes up in the stone circle on Craigh na Dun. She has no idea that it’s not May 2, 1946 anymore.
(Note: The British version of „Outlander“, „Cross Stitch“, begins in 1946. That is the correct year, since in late April/early May 1945, the date given in „Outlander“, WWII hadn’t ended yet and Claire and Frank wouldn’t be on a postwar honeymoon in the Highlands.)
Jamie returns to Scotland. In early May, he meets Claire, whom he marries a few weeks later – which takes him out of the competition to become the new Chief of Clan MacKenzie. For Claire, it means safety from Jack Randall; for Jamie, it’s been love at first sight.
In October, Claire is accused of witchcraft; Jamie saves her, and she tells him that she may not be a witch but she is from the future. Jamie takes her home to Lallybroch.
Later that winter, he is betrayed and delivered to Jack Randall. Claire saves him from Wentworth Prison, and they flee to France.
In Paris, Claire and Jamie attempt to conspire against Charles Stuart, the „Bonnie Prince“, hoping to prevent the Jacobite Rising of 1745/46 and its bloody end. In the course of his hunt for information, Jamie meets a young English bookseller/spy named Minnie Rennie.
In May, Claire and Jamie lose their daughter, Faith, who is stillborn.
Thinking that they have nipped the Rising in the bud, they return home to Scotland in the Fall.
On January 3, Lord John Grey‘s brother, Harold Melton, marries Minnie Rennie in Amsterdam.
In late summer, Jamie receives a letter from Charles Stuart, who officially claims the throne – and who has signed Jamie’s name as one of his supporters. Now Jamie has no other choice but to fight for Charles Stuart and try to help him win.
In August, Charles Stuart sets foot on Scottish soil, first on Eriskay and then at Glenfinnan. On September 17 the Jacobites take Edinburgh.
On the eve of the Battle of Prestonpans, Jamie gains important information from a young English scout named John William Grey, later also known as Lord John Grey. This is an important contribution to the Jacobite victory over the Crown’s troops under General John Cope at Prestonpans on September 21.
In early December the Jacobites take Derby, a mere hundred miles from the gates of London, but then they surprisingly retreat north.
January 17: Last Jacobite victory at Falkirk.
March: Mary Hawkins marries Jack Randall.
April 16: The Crown’s troops under William of Cumberland win the Rising’s last battle on the moor of Culloden near Inverness. After the bloodbath of Culloden they proceed with an ethnic cleansing of the Highlands.
April 16: Since Claire is pregnant and Jamie fervently wishes the child to survive, he sends her back through the stones and into the future. Badly wounded, he survives the Battle of Culloden and returns home to Lallybroch.
John Grey loses his lover Hector Dalrymple in the Battle of Culloden.
During the first seven years after the battle, Jamie lives hidden in a cave on his own land.
In November, Jamie’s nephew Ian is born. Ian Fraser Murray is the last child of Jamie’s sister Jenny and his best friend Ian.
Jamie’s situation, hidden away in a cave, is getting more and more dangerous for himself and for his family.
John Grey becomes governor of Ardsmuir.
Ardsmuir prison is closed and the prisoners get deported to the New World. At John Grey’s behest, Jamie gets to continue his sentence as a groom at Helwater in the Lake District.
Lord John returns to London.
Lord John gets drawn into the mysterious goings-on at London’s Hellfire Club.
In London, an unknown woman in a green velvet dress is killed. Lord John helps to find the murderer
Lord John spends some time as a military liaison in Germany. He uncovers an act of French sabotage and thus helps the Prussians win the Battle of Roßbach.
Lord John and the Private Matter
January: William “Willie“ Clarence Henry George Ransom, the Ninth Earl of Ellesmere, is born. His mother Genevy Dunsany dies a few hours after his birth.
Investigating the explosion of a cannon during the Battle of Crefeld, Lord John is confronted with the fact that his own ranks are no strangers to sabotage, either.
Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade
Serving under General Simon Fraser, Lord John participates in the Battle of Quebec. In the end he takes on financial responsibility for the upbringing of a baby he names John Cinnamon, the illegimate son of his relative Malcolm Stubbs and an indigenous woman.
With the help of Jamie Fraser, who still lives at Helwater, Lord John prevents another Jacobite rising.
October 25: King George II of England dies. His grandson succeeds him to the throne as George III.
In January Jamie marries Laoghaire MacKenzie but a short time later he moves to Edinburgh and opens a print shop.
November 1: Coming from the year 1968, Claire arrives in the stone circle on Craigh na Dun.
November 1: Coming from the year 1968, native activist Richard Donner arrives in the stone circle on Ocracoke.
After a twenty-year separation, Claire and Jamie are reunited in Edinburgh. But both of them aren’t the same people anymore they were at the time they parted.
While they haltingly find each other again, Jamie’s nephew Ian is abducted by pirates. Together with Jamie’s adopted son Fergus and his stepdaughter Marsali, Jamie and Claire follow him on a ship across the Atlantic.
An eventful sea voyage brings Claire and Jamie to Hispaniola, where Fergus marries Marsali, and to Jamaica, where Lord John Grey is the new governor. They find Ian on a plantation whose owner turns out to be Geillis Duncan.
Finally they are swept ashore in Georgia by a storm. They are in America.
Jamie agrees to a dangerous deal with North Carolina governor William Tryon. He receives a land grant, and in August Jamie and Claire lay the foundations for their settlement on Fraser’s Ridge.
Coming from the year 1971, Brianna and Roger arrive at Craigh na Dun on May 1/on the day of the summer solstice.
They travel to the New World on different ships. In early September, they meet in Wilmington, where they are “handfast“.
A few days later, Brianna is raped by Stephen Bonnet. Mistaking Roger for the rapist, Jamie and Ian intercept him on his way to Fraser’s Ridge and sell him to the Mohawk.
February: Young Ian is adopted by the Kahnyen’kehaka in exchange for Roger.
May: Brianna gives birth to Jeremiah Alexander Ian Fraser MacKenzie.
Late October: Brianna and Roger marry during a Gathering on Mount Helicon.
In March Jamie’s aunt Jocasta Cameron marries his old friend Duncan Innes.
During the Battle of Alamance, Geillis Duncan’s son William Buccleigh MacKenzie denounces Roger to the Royalists. Roger is hanged as an alleged Regulator. He barely escapes alive but loses his singing voice.
October: Ian returns from the Mohawk to Fraser’s Ridge.
Jamie has long been undecided which side to fight on in the coming Revolution. After the catastrophe of Culloden, he never wanted to fight against an English King again, but his wife an daughter convince him that this time the American rebels will win. When he makes up his mind, Roger and Brianna decide to stay in the past with their son Jemmy.
Marauders and outlaws disturb the life in the Colonies. The old order is disintegrating.
Fraser’s Ridge is not spared from this. Marauders raid the surrounding settlements. In the fall, Claire is abducted and raped by a gang of outlaws. Jamie, Roger and Ian lead a search party and kill almost all of the kidnappers. This does not erase the trauma for Claire; she suffers from panic attacks even many years later.
In October Henri-Christian is born, Fergus‘ and Marsali’s fourth child. He is born dwarfed. Fergus is plagued by self-doubt and worry about the future of the child.
December 16: Boston Tea Party
Jamie begins to organize and arm a militia in Fraser’s Ridge in order to be prepared for the coming unrest.
Roger’s painful experiences with the Mohawk and at Alamance have shown him his vocation: He seeks spiritual guidance in Charlotte so he can work towards being ordinated as a Presbyterian priest.
Brianna goes on a long hike with Ian. He shows her the skeleton of a woolly mammoth that he has found and tells her about his failed marriage with Emily, his beloved Mohawk wife.
Malva Christie, daughter of Tom Christie, a Scottish settler in Fraser’s Ridge, shows great interest in Claire’s medical skills. She poves to be a smart student, and Claire hopes to be able to train Malva as her successor. Instead, Malva uses her knowledge against Claire and infects her with a sickness that almost kills her.
The rebels get organized politically as well and develop a working state of their own. From early September until late October the First Continental Congress convenes in Philadelphia.
Lord John finds Jamie’s name on the list of a Committee of Correspondence. In March, he warns him in a letter not to put himself and his family in danger. The front lines are being drawn; sometimes they run straight through tight-knit communities and families.
On April 18, Roger and Brianna are too excited to sleep. They recite the poem Paul Revere’s Ride to each other while the famous courier is on his way in the night before the Battles of Lexington and Concord, which mark the beginning of the War of Independence on April 19.
In May the Second Continental Congress convenes.
Malva Christie, Claire’s medical assistant, who has become pregnant through incest, is murdered. Claire tries to save her unborn child with an emergency Cesarean but the baby does not survive.
Accused of murdering Malva, Claire becomes a prisoner of Governor Josiah Martin and witnesses the burning of Fort Johnston.
Brianna is abducted by Stephen Bonnet, the criminal who raped her. She is found and freed, and Bonnet is sentenced to death by drowning. During his search for Brianna, Roger has found a stone circle on the Island of Ocracoke.
January 21: The house on Fraser’s Ridge does not burn down as printed in the Wilmington Gazette.
At Moore’s Creek Bridge on February 27, Jamie and his militia fight their first battle for Independence of the American colonies.
April: Brianna gives birth to Amanda Claire Hope MacKenzie.
On July 4th, the Declaration of Independence is ratified.
July: In Wilmington, Brianna and her family meet William Ransom, not knowing that he is Jamie’s son and Brianna’s half brother.
September 22: William witnesses the execution of Nathan Hale.
November 1: Brianna, Roger, Jemmy and Amanda use the stone circle on Ocracoke to return to the future – only there Amanda’s congenital heart defect can be healed.
December 21: The house on Fraser’s Ridge burns down on the „wrong“ date. January 21 was a typing error in the Wilmington Gazette.
As the snow melts, Jamie and Claire leave Fraser’s Ridge for New Bern in order to find a ship for the passage to Scotland. Jamie wants to get his printing press from Edinburgh – the pen, not the sword is his weapon of choice in the coming conflict.
But their ship is captured, and they end up in Fort Ticonderoga and are overrun by the battle as the Brits start their offensive from the north.
Jamie and Claire meet Benedict Arnold.
Jamie is injured during the Battle of Saratoga, and Claire has to amputate his finger. In the field camp, Young Ian has an eye-opening encounter with the young Quaker Rachel Hunter. Jamie and Claire are asked to take General Simon Fraser’s body home to Scotland.
December 20: In Edinburgh, Jamie finds his printing press, which Andrew Bell has kept for him for the past eleven years.
In the first week of January, they bury General Simon Fraser at Corrymony. Then they head for Lallybroch, where they find Jenny‘s husband, Ian, dying of consumption.
A letter begs Claire to come back to Philadelphia, and she leaves Jamie and Jenny at Lallybroch. In March, Ian dies. Jenny decides to travel with Jamie to the Colonies.
Michael Murray and Jamie’s stepdaughter Joan take a rather unexpected glimpse at the Paris underworld.
A. Bell, Printer, Edinburgh, publishes „Pocket Principles of Health“ by C.E.B.R. Fraser, M.D..
A. Bell, Printer, Edinburgh, publishes „Grandfather Tales“ by James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser.
Family ties overcome military loyalties: William enters General Washington’s camp at Valley Forge in order to find help for his badly wounded step-cousin.
The ship that was supposed to carry Jamie to America sinks. Lord John persuades Claire to marry him so that he can protect her.
While the Loyalist troops prepare their departure from Philadelphia in late spring, Young Ian and his sworn enemy Arch Bug meet again under dramatic circumstances … as do Claire and Jamie (and Lord John) … and Jamie and William, who can no longer hide the fact that he looks just like his father.
On June 28 Jamie fights with generals Washington and Lee in the Battle of Monmouth. Claire is shot. A young French officer named La Fayette, who fights on the American side, contributes some of his homemade Roquefort cheese to her medical treatment.
Jamie resigns from service in the Continental army, and the family returns to Philadelphia.
In late summer, Young Ian marries Rachel. One morning Ian’s elderly wolf hound Rollo doesn’t wake up anymore.
Fergus and Marsali’s son Henri-Christian dies when their print shop burns down. The family decides to return to Fraser’s Ridge. They spend the winter in Savannah, where the British army catches up with them. Jamie’s son William needs to save a young prostitute for whom he feels responsible. He sees no other way but to ask his father for help.
In the spring the Frasers return home to Fraser’s Ridge, accompanied by Ian and Rachel, by Jamie’s sister Jenny, by their new charge Fanny and by Fergus‘ oldest son Germain. Jamie takes responsibility for the settlement again, and they start building a new house.
On a trip to Beardsley’s Trading Post Claire meets one of the men who abducted and raped her years ago.
Ian and Rachel have a healthy baby son.
Shortly afterwards, Claire and Jamie see a dark-haired man and a red-haired woman with two children coming up the mountain
…
It’s Roger and Brianna with their children. Searching for Jemmy and fleeing from a gang of criminals, they have travelled from the future to the past, first ending up in the wrong time and finally finding their way to Fraser’s Ridge.
The members of the big family have a lot to tell to each other, but they also have to finish building the house and to construct a new Meeting House. As it turns out, it’s not only Roger who will hold Sunday Services there as a Presbyterian minister. Captain Cunningham, a new settler on Fraser’s Ridge, has ambitions to be a Protestant lay preacher. And Ian’s wife Rachel issues an open invitation to her Quaker meetings.
John Quincy Myers, mountain man and old acquaintance, comes visiting and brings a wild bee hive as a present for Claire. And one night an injured dog comes to Fraser’s Ridge and joins the family. Jamie seems to know Bluebell, as they name her. When Claire asks him suspiciously how, he replies: „I left her howling on her master’s grave.“ Jamie has found Claire’s rapist.
William is looking for his cousin Benjamin, who has disappeared in a very questionable manner. On his way he doesn’t only get involved in new espionage affairs but also finds a new relative. But the discovery is accompanied by more inner turmoil: Can John Cinammon really be his half-brother? In order to find the answer to his questions, he takes the young half-native along to Savannah and to Lord John.
Jamie’s big family has hardly been united on Fraser’s Ridge when fate forces them to swarm out again. Young Ian learns of a massacre in the North that might have affected his first wife, Emily. In order to find out what happened to her, he takes Rachel, his infant son and his mother Jenny on a journey to the Mohawk. Lord John, who is worried about William and hopes that seeing Brianna again might help his stepson, invites Brianna and her family to Savannah. He organizes a well-paid commission for her, to paint the portrait of a wealthy merchant’s wife. The MacKenzies reach Savannah by the end of September.
On October 9, Roger is inadvertently involved in a military confrontation outside Savannah. In this battle Polish general Casimir Pulaski, one of the more fascinating figures of American military history, gets fatally injured. His men ask Brianna to paint a portrait of their beloved dead leader.
William finds Ben and has to realized that his cousin faked his own death in order to disappear … and turn his coat.
Written in My Own Heart’s Blood
The quiet in the backcountry is ending. While the front lines between the supporters of Independence and the Royalists have been running between the settler families – and sometimes straight through them – even in Fraser’s Ridge for quite a while, and change is making itself felt even in the mountains, there has been no real fighting here yet.
But in the spring, Captain Cunningham openly calls on the settlers to side with the Royalists. He even plots to murder Jamie. Jamie manages to stay in control, but he knows that this means he’s won a skirmish, not the war.
Among the books that the MacKenzies have brought into the past there are two gifts for Jamie: A copy of „The Lord of the Rings“ and Frank Randall’s last historical work, „The Soul of a Rebel“. Jamie feels as if Claire’s first husband is talking directly to him from the pages – and that he’s predicting Jamie’s very own journey to Mount Doom: On October 7 the Continental Army will gain an important victory at Kings Mountain, which will play an important part in bringing peace to the backcountry. But, Frank writes, a James Fraser will die in this battle. Will it be Jamie?
Since there is no viable alternative, Jamie, Claire and their militia set out for Kings Mountain with heavy hearts. Jamie is horribly wounded in the battle, but Claire refuses to let him go.
William has spent the past months on his own journey through a network of lies and machinations. In all this, his stepfather Lord John and his step-uncle Hal have been his anchors. Returning to Savannah from yet another search for a beloved person, William finds out that Lord John has been kidnapped. Since no trace of him is to be found, William only sees one way out: to ask his biological father for help.
In Fraser’s Ridge a bitter chapter comes to an end, and the settlers celebrate life with a new wedding. The festivities are crashed by a young rider who approaches Jamie directly and loses no time with civilities – which would have been a charade anyway, given the torn relationship between father and son.
„Sir,“ he said, and swallowed. „I need your help.“
Midsummer: William Buccleigh MacKenzie, son of the witch Geillis Duncan, ambles into the stone circle on Craigh na Dun … and disappears.
Dr. Hector MacEwen from Edinburgh disappears without a trace during a hunting trip in the Highlands …
On October 20 Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp (Randall Fraser) is born.
On November 11, the First World War ends. Vera Brittain, an army nurse, writes an autobiographical report of the War: Testament of Youth is one of the literary inspirations for Claire.
Claire’s parents die in a car crash.
Claire spends her childhood and adolescence traveling with her uncle Lambert, an archaeologist.
Claire becomes a field nurse. Frank works for the British secret service.
September 1: World War II begins with the German attack on Poland.
Roger MacKenzie is born. His father Jeremiah goes MIA.
On March 3, there is a mass panic inside the London Tube station Bethnal Green, which serves as an air raid shelter. Many people are crushed or trampled to death, Roger’s parents among them.
Roger survives; he is adopted by Reverend Wakefield in Inverness.
May 8: The German capitulation ends WWII in Europe.
September 2: The Japanese capitulate after the nuclear bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. World War II is over.
On May 2, the day after the Beltane feast, Claire, who is spending her second honeymoon with Frank in the Scottish Highlands, steps into a split menhir in a stone circle on the hill Craigh na Dun near Inverness … and disappears.
(Note: The British version of „Outlander“, „Cross Stitch“, begins in 1946. That is the correct year, since in late April/early May 1945, the date given in „Outlander“, WWII hadn’t ended yet and Claire and Frank wouldn’t be on a postwar honeymoon in the Highlands.)
In April Claire reappears in Inverness under mysterious circumstances. She is two months pregnant.
In November she gives Birth to Brianna Ellen Randall.
The Beatles release „Yesterday“.
Together with her adolescent daughter Brianna, Claire travels to Inverness in order to investigate the fates of a few survivors of Culloden. With the help of young historian Roger Wakefield / MacKenzie she finds out that Jamie survived the battle, too.
May 1: Gillian Edgars / Geillis Duncan travels to the past through the stones of Craigh na Dun to fight for the Stuart cause. She lands ca. 1733, about ten years earlier than intended. On the same night, her co-conspirator Kenneth follows her, but he ends up in 1743 – a few hours before Claire. He is killed shortly after his arrival.
November 1: Claire steps through the split stone of Craigh na Dun to find Jamie. She travels back to the year 1766.
November 1: A group of five activists (a.k.a. the Montauk Five) travels to the past through the stone circle on Ocracoke, meaning to prevent the genocide of the Native Americans. One of them, Richard Donner, ends up in 1766; his companion Jojo dies in the passage; a third man, Robert Springer (Otter Tooth), travels too far by decades.
May 1: Brianna, who has found an antique newspaper clipping reporting the death of her parents in the eighteenth century, travels to the past to warn Claire and Jamie. She arrives in 1769. (Craigh na Dun).
Summer solstice: Roger, who has found the clipping as well, follows Brianna to the year 1769. (Craigh na Dun).
The first Star Wars movie opens in U.S. theaters. Brianna and Roger’s son Jemmy later becomes a huge fan of its young hero Luke Skywalker.
Since their daughter Amanda has a congenital heart defect that could not be treated in the 18th century, Brianna and Roger had to leave Fraser’s Ridge and head back to the future. Coming from 1776, they land at Ocracoke on November 1.
With the help of Claire’s old friend Joe Abernathy, Brianna, Roger and the kids find their footing in the „present“. Eventually they buy Jamie’s old family estate in Scotland, Lallybroch, and settle down there.
In September, Roger and Brianna find a box that has been deposited for their son Jemmy. It contains letters from Jamie and Claire, allowing their children to keep taking part in their lives in the past.
A vagabond who has been scaring the kids, turns out to be a visitor from the past: William Buccleigh MacKenzie, Geillis Duncan’s son and Roger’s grandfather five times removed, has traveled haplessly to the future.
It’s someone else who really threatens the family, though: Rob Cameron, a Jacobite fanatic, kidnaps Jemmy in order to get to the treasure he’s been reading about in Claire and Jamie’s letters. Assuming that Rob has taken Jemmy to the past, Roger and Buck hasten back through the stones on Craigh na Dun on All Hallows‘ Eve.
After Jemmy’s rescue and a dramatic showdown with Rob Cameron and his cronies, Brianna and the kids flee to the U.S. and to Claire’s best friend Joe Abernathy. Soon, though, Brianna decides that the safest place for the kids is the past. On the winter solstice she follows Roger into the eighteenth century.
A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows
Jamie Fraser’s father Brian („Brian Dubh“) is born as an illegitimate son of Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, „The Old Fox“. His mother is Davina Porter, a maid in the Fraser of Lovat’s keep.
Brian dies before Outlander begins but is mentioned there several times.
In Written in My Own Heart’s Blood Roger and Brianna MacKenzie meet Brian when they inadvertently travel to the year 1739.
Jamie Fraser’s mother Ellen MacKenzie is born. She is the oldest child of „Red Jacob“ MacKenzie, clan chief of the MacKenzies of Leoch.
Colum and Dougal MacKenzie are her brothers, her sisters Jocasta MacKenzie Cameron Innes, Flora and Janet MacKenzie.
Lallybroch is built. This is mentioned in Chapter 27 of Outlander.
There are questions about this date, though; it is probably only the laying of the foundations. In Chapter 34 of Drums of Autumn it says 1716, the year Brian and Ellen move in, and their oldest son William is born. In the first Epilogue of A Breath of Snow and Ashes, Brianna says 1721 – that is the year of Jamie’s birth and has to be a continuity glitch.
On May 1 James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser is born.
(In Chapter 58 of The Fiery Cross Jamie counts his blessings on his 50th birthday.)
Lord John Grey is born.
Ellen Fraser dies giving birth to her fourth child.
Jamie spends a few months fostering with Dougal MacKenzie’s family as a fourteen-year-old.
In November Roger and William Buccleigh MacKenzie travel to the past from 1980. Looking for „Jeremiah“ MacKenzie, they end up in the same time where Roger’s father Jeremiah „Jerry“ is stranded. They meet Jerry as well as Jamie’s father Brian Fraser, Dougal MacKenzie and Jack Randall. Jamie is not in Lallybroch because he is studying in Paris.
Written in My Own Heart’s Blood
A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows
Brianna and her children find Roger, who has travelled to the „wrong“ time, in Lallybroch. They have to decide whether the gangsters two hundred years in the future are more dangerous than the war thirty-five years from now – and they opt for the nearer future. They take a ship from Scotland to America and use the stone circle on Ocracoke to travel to 1779 – to Jamie and Claire, whom they find in Fraser’s Ridge.
Written in My Own Heart’s Blood
Jamie meets Captain Jack Randall for the first time. He is arrested and sentenced for obstruction. When Brian Fraser witnesses his brutal whipping in Fort William, he suffers a stroke and dies a short time later.
Jamie escapes to France, where he serves as a mercenary.
Jamie’s sister Jenny marries Ian Murray. Their first son James Fraser Murray is born.
May 2: Claire wakes up in the stone circle on Craigh na Dun. She has no idea that it’s not May 2, 1946 anymore.
(Note: The British version of „Outlander“, „Cross Stitch“, begins in 1946. That is the correct year, since in late April/early May 1945, the date given in „Outlander“, WWII hadn’t ended yet and Claire and Frank wouldn’t be on a postwar honeymoon in the Highlands.)
Jamie returns to Scotland. In early May, he meets Claire, whom he marries a few weeks later – which takes him out of the competition to become the new Chief of Clan MacKenzie. For Claire, it means safety from Jack Randall; for Jamie, it’s been love at first sight.
In October, Claire is accused of witchcraft; Jamie saves her, and she tells him that she may not be a witch but she is from the future. Jamie takes her home to Lallybroch.
Later that winter, he is betrayed and delivered to Jack Randall. Claire saves him from Wentworth Prison, and they flee to France.
In Paris, Claire and Jamie attempt to conspire against Charles Stuart, the „Bonnie Prince“, hoping to prevent the Jacobite Rising of 1745/46 and its bloody end. In the course of his hunt for information, Jamie meets a young English bookseller/spy named Minnie Rennie.
In May, Claire and Jamie lose their daughter, Faith, who is stillborn.
Thinking that they have nipped the Rising in the bud, they return home to Scotland in the Fall.
On January 3, Lord John Grey‘s brother, Harold Melton, marries Minnie Rennie in Amsterdam.
In late summer, Jamie receives a letter from Charles Stuart, who officially claims the throne – and who has signed Jamie’s name as one of his supporters. Now Jamie has no other choice but to fight for Charles Stuart and try to help him win.
In August, Charles Stuart sets foot on Scottish soil, first on Eriskay and then at Glenfinnan. On September 17 the Jacobites take Edinburgh.
On the eve of the Battle of Prestonpans, Jamie gains important information from a young English scout named John William Grey, later also known as Lord John Grey. This is an important contribution to the Jacobite victory over the Crown’s troops under General John Cope at Prestonpans on September 21.
In early December the Jacobites take Derby, a mere hundred miles from the gates of London, but then they surprisingly retreat north.
January 17: Last Jacobite victory at Falkirk.
March: Mary Hawkins marries Jack Randall.
April 16: The Crown’s troops under William of Cumberland win the Rising’s last battle on the moor of Culloden near Inverness. After the bloodbath of Culloden they proceed with an ethnic cleansing of the Highlands.
April 16: Since Claire is pregnant and Jamie fervently wishes the child to survive, he sends her back through the stones and into the future. Badly wounded, he survives the Battle of Culloden and returns home to Lallybroch.
John Grey loses his lover Hector Dalrymple in the Battle of Culloden.
During the first seven years after the battle, Jamie lives hidden in a cave on his own land.
In November, Jamie’s nephew Ian is born. Ian Fraser Murray is the last child of Jamie’s sister Jenny and his best friend Ian.
Jamie’s situation, hidden away in a cave, is getting more and more dangerous for himself and for his family.
John Grey becomes governor of Ardsmuir.
Ardsmuir prison is closed and the prisoners get deported to the New World. At John Grey’s behest, Jamie gets to continue his sentence as a groom at Helwater in the Lake District.
Lord John returns to London.
Lord John gets drawn into the mysterious goings-on at London’s Hellfire Club.
In London, an unknown woman in a green velvet dress is killed. Lord John helps to find the murderer
Lord John spends some time as a military liaison in Germany. He uncovers an act of French sabotage and thus helps the Prussians win the Battle of Roßbach.
Lord John and the Private Matter
January: William “Willie“ Clarence Henry George Ransom, the Ninth Earl of Ellesmere, is born. His mother Genevy Dunsany dies a few hours after his birth.
Investigating the explosion of a cannon during the Battle of Crefeld, Lord John is confronted with the fact that his own ranks are no strangers to sabotage, either.
Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade
Serving under General Simon Fraser, Lord John participates in the Battle of Quebec. In the end he takes on financial responsibility for the upbringing of a baby he names John Cinnamon, the illegimate son of his relative Malcolm Stubbs and an indigenous woman.
With the help of Jamie Fraser, who still lives at Helwater, Lord John prevents another Jacobite rising.
October 25: King George II of England dies. His grandson succeeds him to the throne as George III.
In January Jamie marries Laoghaire MacKenzie but a short time later he moves to Edinburgh and opens a print shop.
November 1: Coming from the year 1968, Claire arrives in the stone circle on Craigh na Dun.
November 1: Coming from the year 1968, native activist Richard Donner arrives in the stone circle on Ocracoke.
After a twenty-year separation, Claire and Jamie are reunited in Edinburgh. But both of them aren’t the same people anymore they were at the time they parted.
While they haltingly find each other again, Jamie’s nephew Ian is abducted by pirates. Together with Jamie’s adopted son Fergus and his stepdaughter Marsali, Jamie and Claire follow him on a ship across the Atlantic.
An eventful sea voyage brings Claire and Jamie to Hispaniola, where Fergus marries Marsali, and to Jamaica, where Lord John Grey is the new governor. They find Ian on a plantation whose owner turns out to be Geillis Duncan.
Finally they are swept ashore in Georgia by a storm. They are in America.
Jamie agrees to a dangerous deal with North Carolina governor William Tryon. He receives a land grant, and in August Jamie and Claire lay the foundations for their settlement on Fraser’s Ridge.
Coming from the year 1971, Brianna and Roger arrive at Craigh na Dun on May 1/on the day of the summer solstice.
They travel to the New World on different ships. In early September, they meet in Wilmington, where they are “handfast“.
A few days later, Brianna is raped by Stephen Bonnet. Mistaking Roger for the rapist, Jamie and Ian intercept him on his way to Fraser’s Ridge and sell him to the Mohawk.
February: Young Ian is adopted by the Kahnyen’kehaka in exchange for Roger.
May: Brianna gives birth to Jeremiah Alexander Ian Fraser MacKenzie.
Late October: Brianna and Roger marry during a Gathering on Mount Helicon.
In March Jamie’s aunt Jocasta Cameron marries his old friend Duncan Innes.
During the Battle of Alamance, Geillis Duncan’s son William Buccleigh MacKenzie denounces Roger to the Royalists. Roger is hanged as an alleged Regulator. He barely escapes alive but loses his singing voice.
October: Ian returns from the Mohawk to Fraser’s Ridge.
Jamie has long been undecided which side to fight on in the coming Revolution. After the catastrophe of Culloden, he never wanted to fight against an English King again, but his wife an daughter convince him that this time the American rebels will win. When he makes up his mind, Roger and Brianna decide to stay in the past with their son Jemmy.
Marauders and outlaws disturb the life in the Colonies. The old order is disintegrating.
Fraser’s Ridge is not spared from this. Marauders raid the surrounding settlements. In the fall, Claire is abducted and raped by a gang of outlaws. Jamie, Roger and Ian lead a search party and kill almost all of the kidnappers. This does not erase the trauma for Claire; she suffers from panic attacks even many years later.
In October Henri-Christian is born, Fergus‘ and Marsali’s fourth child. He is born dwarfed. Fergus is plagued by self-doubt and worry about the future of the child.
December 16: Boston Tea Party
Jamie begins to organize and arm a militia in Fraser’s Ridge in order to be prepared for the coming unrest.
Roger’s painful experiences with the Mohawk and at Alamance have shown him his vocation: He seeks spiritual guidance in Charlotte so he can work towards being ordinated as a Presbyterian priest.
Brianna goes on a long hike with Ian. He shows her the skeleton of a woolly mammoth that he has found and tells her about his failed marriage with Emily, his beloved Mohawk wife.
Malva Christie, daughter of Tom Christie, a Scottish settler in Fraser’s Ridge, shows great interest in Claire’s medical skills. She poves to be a smart student, and Claire hopes to be able to train Malva as her successor. Instead, Malva uses her knowledge against Claire and infects her with a sickness that almost kills her.
The rebels get organized politically as well and develop a working state of their own. From early September until late October the First Continental Congress convenes in Philadelphia.
Lord John finds Jamie’s name on the list of a Committee of Correspondence. In March, he warns him in a letter not to put himself and his family in danger. The front lines are being drawn; sometimes they run straight through tight-knit communities and families.
On April 18, Roger and Brianna are too excited to sleep. They recite the poem Paul Revere’s Ride to each other while the famous courier is on his way in the night before the Battles of Lexington and Concord, which mark the beginning of the War of Independence on April 19.
In May the Second Continental Congress convenes.
Malva Christie, Claire’s medical assistant, who has become pregnant through incest, is murdered. Claire tries to save her unborn child with an emergency Cesarean but the baby does not survive.
Accused of murdering Malva, Claire becomes a prisoner of Governor Josiah Martin and witnesses the burning of Fort Johnston.
Brianna is abducted by Stephen Bonnet, the criminal who raped her. She is found and freed, and Bonnet is sentenced to death by drowning. During his search for Brianna, Roger has found a stone circle on the Island of Ocracoke.
January 21: The house on Fraser’s Ridge does not burn down as printed in the Wilmington Gazette.
At Moore’s Creek Bridge on February 27, Jamie and his militia fight their first battle for Independence of the American colonies.
April: Brianna gives birth to Amanda Claire Hope MacKenzie.
On July 4th, the Declaration of Independence is ratified.
July: In Wilmington, Brianna and her family meet William Ransom, not knowing that he is Jamie’s son and Brianna’s half brother.
September 22: William witnesses the execution of Nathan Hale.
November 1: Brianna, Roger, Jemmy and Amanda use the stone circle on Ocracoke to return to the future – only there Amanda’s congenital heart defect can be healed.
December 21: The house on Fraser’s Ridge burns down on the „wrong“ date. January 21 was a typing error in the Wilmington Gazette.
As the snow melts, Jamie and Claire leave Fraser’s Ridge for New Bern in order to find a ship for the passage to Scotland. Jamie wants to get his printing press from Edinburgh – the pen, not the sword is his weapon of choice in the coming conflict.
But their ship is captured, and they end up in Fort Ticonderoga and are overrun by the battle as the Brits start their offensive from the north.
Jamie and Claire meet Benedict Arnold.
Jamie is injured during the Battle of Saratoga, and Claire has to amputate his finger. In the field camp, Young Ian has an eye-opening encounter with the young Quaker Rachel Hunter. Jamie and Claire are asked to take General Simon Fraser’s body home to Scotland.
December 20: In Edinburgh, Jamie finds his printing press, which Andrew Bell has kept for him for the past eleven years.
In the first week of January, they bury General Simon Fraser at Corrymony. Then they head for Lallybroch, where they find Jenny‘s husband, Ian, dying of consumption.
A letter begs Claire to come back to Philadelphia, and she leaves Jamie and Jenny at Lallybroch. In March, Ian dies. Jenny decides to travel with Jamie to the Colonies.
Michael Murray and Jamie’s stepdaughter Joan take a rather unexpected glimpse at the Paris underworld.
A. Bell, Printer, Edinburgh, publishes „Pocket Principles of Health“ by C.E.B.R. Fraser, M.D..
A. Bell, Printer, Edinburgh, publishes „Grandfather Tales“ by James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser.
Family ties overcome military loyalties: William enters General Washington’s camp at Valley Forge in order to find help for his badly wounded step-cousin.
The ship that was supposed to carry Jamie to America sinks. Lord John persuades Claire to marry him so that he can protect her.
While the Loyalist troops prepare their departure from Philadelphia in late spring, Young Ian and his sworn enemy Arch Bug meet again under dramatic circumstances … as do Claire and Jamie (and Lord John) … and Jamie and William, who can no longer hide the fact that he looks just like his father.
On June 28 Jamie fights with generals Washington and Lee in the Battle of Monmouth. Claire is shot. A young French officer named La Fayette, who fights on the American side, contributes some of his homemade Roquefort cheese to her medical treatment.
Jamie resigns from service in the Continental army, and the family returns to Philadelphia.
In late summer, Young Ian marries Rachel. One morning Ian’s elderly wolf hound Rollo doesn’t wake up anymore.
Fergus and Marsali’s son Henri-Christian dies when their print shop burns down. The family decides to return to Fraser’s Ridge. They spend the winter in Savannah, where the British army catches up with them. Jamie’s son William needs to save a young prostitute for whom he feels responsible. He sees no other way but to ask his father for help.
In the spring the Frasers return home to Fraser’s Ridge, accompanied by Ian and Rachel, by Jamie’s sister Jenny, by their new charge Fanny and by Fergus‘ oldest son Germain. Jamie takes responsibility for the settlement again, and they start building a new house.
On a trip to Beardsley’s Trading Post Claire meets one of the men who abducted and raped her years ago.
Ian and Rachel have a healthy baby son.
Shortly afterwards, Claire and Jamie see a dark-haired man and a red-haired woman with two children coming up the mountain
…
It’s Roger and Brianna with their children. Searching for Jemmy and fleeing from a gang of criminals, they have travelled from the future to the past, first ending up in the wrong time and finally finding their way to Fraser’s Ridge.
The members of the big family have a lot to tell to each other, but they also have to finish building the house and to construct a new Meeting House. As it turns out, it’s not only Roger who will hold Sunday Services there as a Presbyterian minister. Captain Cunningham, a new settler on Fraser’s Ridge, has ambitions to be a Protestant lay preacher. And Ian’s wife Rachel issues an open invitation to her Quaker meetings.
John Quincy Myers, mountain man and old acquaintance, comes visiting and brings a wild bee hive as a present for Claire. And one night an injured dog comes to Fraser’s Ridge and joins the family. Jamie seems to know Bluebell, as they name her. When Claire asks him suspiciously how, he replies: „I left her howling on her master’s grave.“ Jamie has found Claire’s rapist.
William is looking for his cousin Benjamin, who has disappeared in a very questionable manner. On his way he doesn’t only get involved in new espionage affairs but also finds a new relative. But the discovery is accompanied by more inner turmoil: Can John Cinammon really be his half-brother? In order to find the answer to his questions, he takes the young half-native along to Savannah and to Lord John.
Jamie’s big family has hardly been united on Fraser’s Ridge when fate forces them to swarm out again. Young Ian learns of a massacre in the North that might have affected his first wife, Emily. In order to find out what happened to her, he takes Rachel, his infant son and his mother Jenny on a journey to the Mohawk. Lord John, who is worried about William and hopes that seeing Brianna again might help his stepson, invites Brianna and her family to Savannah. He organizes a well-paid commission for her, to paint the portrait of a wealthy merchant’s wife. The MacKenzies reach Savannah by the end of September.
On October 9, Roger is inadvertently involved in a military confrontation outside Savannah. In this battle Polish general Casimir Pulaski, one of the more fascinating figures of American military history, gets fatally injured. His men ask Brianna to paint a portrait of their beloved dead leader.
William finds Ben and has to realized that his cousin faked his own death in order to disappear … and turn his coat.
Written in My Own Heart’s Blood
The quiet in the backcountry is ending. While the front lines between the supporters of Independence and the Royalists have been running between the settler families – and sometimes straight through them – even in Fraser’s Ridge for quite a while, and change is making itself felt even in the mountains, there has been no real fighting here yet.
But in the spring, Captain Cunningham openly calls on the settlers to side with the Royalists. He even plots to murder Jamie. Jamie manages to stay in control, but he knows that this means he’s won a skirmish, not the war.
Among the books that the MacKenzies have brought into the past there are two gifts for Jamie: A copy of „The Lord of the Rings“ and Frank Randall’s last historical work, „The Soul of a Rebel“. Jamie feels as if Claire’s first husband is talking directly to him from the pages – and that he’s predicting Jamie’s very own journey to Mount Doom: On October 7 the Continental Army will gain an important victory at Kings Mountain, which will play an important part in bringing peace to the backcountry. But, Frank writes, a James Fraser will die in this battle. Will it be Jamie?
Since there is no viable alternative, Jamie, Claire and their militia set out for Kings Mountain with heavy hearts. Jamie is horribly wounded in the battle, but Claire refuses to let him go.
William has spent the past months on his own journey through a network of lies and machinations. In all this, his stepfather Lord John and his step-uncle Hal have been his anchors. Returning to Savannah from yet another search for a beloved person, William finds out that Lord John has been kidnapped. Since no trace of him is to be found, William only sees one way out: to ask his biological father for help.
In Fraser’s Ridge a bitter chapter comes to an end, and the settlers celebrate life with a new wedding. The festivities are crashed by a young rider who approaches Jamie directly and loses no time with civilities – which would have been a charade anyway, given the torn relationship between father and son.
„Sir,“ he said, and swallowed. „I need your help.“
Midsummer: William Buccleigh MacKenzie, son of the witch Geillis Duncan, ambles into the stone circle on Craigh na Dun … and disappears.
Dr. Hector MacEwen from Edinburgh disappears without a trace during a hunting trip in the Highlands …
On October 20 Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp (Randall Fraser) is born.
On November 11, the First World War ends. Vera Brittain, an army nurse, writes an autobiographical report of the War: Testament of Youth is one of the literary inspirations for Claire.
Claire’s parents die in a car crash.
Claire spends her childhood and adolescence traveling with her uncle Lambert, an archaeologist.
Claire becomes a field nurse. Frank works for the British secret service.
September 1: World War II begins with the German attack on Poland.
Roger MacKenzie is born. His father Jeremiah goes MIA.
On March 3, there is a mass panic inside the London Tube station Bethnal Green, which serves as an air raid shelter. Many people are crushed or trampled to death, Roger’s parents among them.
Roger survives; he is adopted by Reverend Wakefield in Inverness.
May 8: The German capitulation ends WWII in Europe.
September 2: The Japanese capitulate after the nuclear bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. World War II is over.
On May 2, the day after the Beltane feast, Claire, who is spending her second honeymoon with Frank in the Scottish Highlands, steps into a split menhir in a stone circle on the hill Craigh na Dun near Inverness … and disappears.
(Note: The British version of „Outlander“, „Cross Stitch“, begins in 1946. That is the correct year, since in late April/early May 1945, the date given in „Outlander“, WWII hadn’t ended yet and Claire and Frank wouldn’t be on a postwar honeymoon in the Highlands.)
In April Claire reappears in Inverness under mysterious circumstances. She is two months pregnant.
In November she gives Birth to Brianna Ellen Randall.
Together with her adolescent daughter Brianna, Claire travels to Inverness in order to investigate the fates of a few survivors of Culloden. With the help of young historian Roger Wakefield / MacKenzie she finds out that Jamie survived the battle, too.
May 1: Gillian Edgars / Geillis Duncan travels to the past through the stones of Craigh na Dun to fight for the Stuart cause. She lands ca. 1733, about ten years earlier than intended. On the same night, her co-conspirator Kenneth follows her, but he ends up in 1743 – a few hours before Claire. He is killed shortly after his arrival.
November 1: Claire steps through the split stone of Craigh na Dun to find Jamie. She travels back to the year 1766.
November 1: A group of five activists (a.k.a. the Montauk Five) travels to the past through the stone circle on Ocracoke, meaning to prevent the genocide of the Native Americans. One of them, Richard Donner, ends up in 1766; his companion Jojo dies in the passage; a third man, Robert Springer (Otter Tooth), travels too far by decades.
May 1: Brianna, who has found an antique newspaper clipping reporting the death of her parents in the eighteenth century, travels to the past to warn Claire and Jamie. She arrives in 1769. (Craigh na Dun).
Summer solstice: Roger, who has found the clipping as well, follows Brianna to the year 1769. (Craigh na Dun).
The first Star Wars movie opens in U.S. theaters. Brianna and Roger’s son Jemmy later becomes a huge fan of its young hero Luke Skywalker.
Since their daughter Amanda has a congenital heart defect that could not be treated in the 18th century, Brianna and Roger had to leave Fraser’s Ridge and head back to the future. Coming from 1776, they land at Ocracoke on November 1.
With the help of Claire’s old friend Joe Abernathy, Brianna, Roger and the kids find their footing in the „present“. Eventually they buy Jamie’s old family estate in Scotland, Lallybroch, and settle down there.
In September, Roger and Brianna find a box that has been deposited for their son Jemmy. It contains letters from Jamie and Claire, allowing their children to keep taking part in their lives in the past.
A vagabond who has been scaring the kids, turns out to be a visitor from the past: William Buccleigh MacKenzie, Geillis Duncan’s son and Roger’s grandfather five times removed, has traveled haplessly to the future.
It’s someone else who really threatens the family, though: Rob Cameron, a Jacobite fanatic, kidnaps Jemmy in order to get to the treasure he’s been reading about in Claire and Jamie’s letters. Assuming that Rob has taken Jemmy to the past, Roger and Buck hasten back through the stones on Craigh na Dun on All Hallows‘ Eve.
After Jemmy’s rescue and a dramatic showdown with Rob Cameron and his cronies, Brianna and the kids flee to the U.S. and to Claire’s best friend Joe Abernathy. Soon, though, Brianna decides that the safest place for the kids is the past. On the winter solstice she follows Roger into the eighteenth century.
A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows