Lachlan McIntosh was a Scottish immigrant to the United States. He was a patriot during the American Revolution and helped dispute the boundary between Georgia and South Carolina. While he never financially recovered following the Revolutionary War, he is revered as a military hero.
McIntosh was born in Badenoch, a district in the Scottish
Highlands, on March 17, 1725. He was the son of John Mohr and Marjory (Fraser)
McIntosh. In 1736, he left Scotland during his childhood, relocating to the
colony of Georgia, where he would later establish a successful rice plantation.
Very little is known of his childhood and his life before
1775. Historian Benson Lossing states that his father was taken to St. Augustine
as a prisoner when McIntosh was 13 years old. In 1748, McIntosh moved to South
Carolina, where he worked with a clerk and became friends with Henry Laurens,
who signed the Declaration of Independence in the future.
He was an early participant in the movement for American independence.
He was commissioned as a colonel in the Georgia Militia. He fatally injured Button
Gwinnett, another Georgia patriot, during a duel, so George Washington
relocated him to the north.
Eventually, McIntosh reached the position of brigadier general
during his time in the Continental Army. He was captured by the British forces
and spent two years as a prisoner. He was released after the war and was
extremely poor. When he went back to his plantation, he saw that it had been
destroyed.
After the Revolution, he was an official representative during
a boundary dispute with South Carolina. In 1784, he was brevetted as a major
general. He was also elected to the Continental Congress in 1784, but he did
not attend. He married Sarah Threadcraft and had a son, Captain William
McIntosh. McIntosh never financially recovered from the war.
He did not take part in public life in his later years.
Instead, he focused his time on managing his deceased brother George’s estate. McIntosh
died on February 20, 1806 at the age of 80, in Savannah, Georgia. He was buried
in a Colonial Cemetery in Savannah.