He is well educated and has a knack for learning languages. Raised to be the future Laird of Lallybroch , he is a natural leader, from the homestead to the battlefield. He first meets Claire on his return home to Scotland from France.
He was very close to his older brother, William , and was devastated when his brother died of smallpox when Jamie was only six or so. From then on, he was raised to be the future laird of Broch Tuarach, the more official name of the estate. The family suffered another blow when Ellen died in childbed, along with the baby , when Jamie was about eight years old. His older sister, Jenny , then aged ten, took on the running of the household after their mother's death, and their father Brian raised them both to adulthood.
Around age fourteen, Jamie went to foster with his maternal uncle, Dougal MacKenzie , at Beannachd, his uncle's home. Jamie had been previously taught some left-handed swordsmanship by the factor at Lallybroch, John Murray , his best friend Ian 's father. After Jamie had returned home to Lallybroch, in October of he was arrested by the English for obstruction β that is, for defending his family and property when the English set upon his home β and then taken to Fort William for imprisonment.
While still recovering, Captain Jonathan "Black Jack" Randall ordered that he be given another hundred lashes for theft. After his second flogging, friends came to help Jamie escape a second time, and in the process one of the guards was killed; thence Jamie had a price of ten pounds Sterling on his head for murder. By the time he had escaped, though, he had word that his father had died of an apoplexy , apparently caused by his distress after Jamie's second flogging, when it looked as though Jamie had died.
Jamie then fled to France to join his best friend, Ian Murray , as a mercenary in the French army, where he stayed for two years. Returning once more to Scotland in , Jamie traveled the countryside with a gang of broken men β men without clans β for six months, raiding cattle and the like from the borderlands, when one day someone hit Jamie in the back of the head with an axe, and his uncle Dougal had him sent to recover or die from his injury at the Abbey of Ste. In the spring of , Jamie returned to Scotland with his godfather Murtagh , and once in the Highlands they were found by Dougal and his men, who were absconding with lifted cattle.
