Barclay de Tolly, a member of the Scottish Clan Barclay with roots in Towie (Towy or Tolly, Scottish Gaelic: Tollaigh) in Aberdeenshire, was born in Pamūšis, Courland and Semigallia (in present-day Pakruojis District Municipality, Šiauliai County, Lithuania) and raised in Jõgeveste, Livonia, Russian Empire (now part of Estonia). The commonly accepted birth date of 27 December 1761 is actually the day of his baptism in the Lutheran church of the town Žeimelis. He was a German-speaking descendant of a Scottish family: his ancestor Peter Barclay had settled in Livonia in the 17th century. From 1765 the young Barclay de Tolly grew up in Saint Petersburg and was raised by his aunt. Gregory Fremont-Barnes and Todd Fisher, who are amongst the world's leading Napoleonic-era scholars, state that this was a Common occurrence amongst the German Protestants, and gave the young man an exposure to higher society unavailable in the Baltic provinces. De Tolly's grandfather Wilhelm served as the mayor of Riga, while his father Bogdan Barclay de Tolly (1734-1781) had served in the Russian army before being admitted into the ranks of Russian nobility by the Tsar. Mikhail Barclay de Tolly himself, the Future field marshal, started active Service in the Imperial Russian Army in 1776, and would spend the rest of his life with the military.