Page:Female Prose Writers of America.djvu/81



of the earliest clans in the Highlands of Scotland that won fame by Southron foray, was formed from the united families of Moy, Borlam, and McIntosh, and bore the general title of "Clan Chatan." This family sided with the House of Stuart in its last bold struggle for power, and fought under its chief, Brigadier-General McIntosh. With the defeat of the Royal family came the fall of their faithful adherents and the confiscation of their property, and with one hundred and thirty Highlanders William McIntosh accompanied Oglethorpe's party, and settled on the Altamaha, in the district now called Georgia.

The refugees carried with them their love for the fatherland, even to the names of its hills. They styled their frontier settlement New Inverness (since changed to Darien), and the county received, and still bears, the family title of McIntosh.

Colonel William McIntosh, the son of the first settler of the new colony, fought as an officer in the French and Indian wars, and died leaving a son, Major Lachlan McIntosh, who was the father of Miss Maria J. McIntosh, the subject of the present sketch.

By profession Major McIntosh was a lawyer, but with the readiness that warlike times engender, at the first summons of danger he stepped from the legal arena to the higher joust of arms, and fought, with the enthusiastic bravery of a Georgian, through all our revolutionary war.

After the establishment of peace, he married a lady of the name of Maxwell, and settled in the practice of his original profession at Sunbury, Liberty county, in Georgia, where our author was born, and where she has spent the greater portion of her life. This place is a small village, beautifully situated at the head of a bay or long arm of the sea. The house of Major McIntosh, a stately old mansion, stood in the centre of the village, commanding a full view of the water, and was, for years, a general gathering place for the gentry of the State. The remembrance of the