My interest in genealogy was sparked by a photocopy of a handwritten account of my mother's family. Written by Elizabeth (Deedie) Meservey sometime between 1950 and 1953, the document lays out not only the descent of the MacIntoshes as she knew it, but also contains evocative recollections of the ancestors she knew, and of their stories of the ancestors before that. It begins like this:
John MacIntosh was one of the Highlanders recruited by James Wolfe, when he was a young major at Fort Augustus - near Inverness - in charge of keeping peace among the clansmen after the battle of Culloden. John fought under Gen. Wolfe at Quebec (1759) & lost a leg. He returned to Scotland, married Euphemia, & sired eight children. He never came to Canada again, but after his death, his widow & the eight grown children came to Canada to settle. She was the first white woman buried in what was known as the MacIntosh Burying Ground, near Buctouche, N.B.
They had been granted lands on the Ottawa River, but when their ship reached Quebec & later Montreal, the Indians were very war-like. Travel was all by trail or canoe, & the Indians were ambushing canoe travellers from the banks of the rivers. The family stayed in Quebec two years, and were influential enough to have their grants changed to a new location in Kent Co., N.B. The first house was built near Grandpa MacIntosh's old home at Black River. Their grant was 500 acres of land and forest.
This account piqued my interest long ago, but with the birth of my own children and the incredible growth of the Internet and genealogical resources available thereon, I started actively pursuing the facts surrounding this story in 1998.
Documentation of the Highland soldier described above remains elusive, but working back toward him has brought to light many other stories of many other people and has inspired me to broaden my research into other branches of my family tree. On this site you can browse some of the fruits of my research so far.
The exacting researcher will find plenty of gaps in the source citations in these pages. I have often omitted references for individuals where information on their family group or branch was all derived from one source. Try climbing the person's ancestry tree and checking parents, grandparents, etc. for references. If you are still mystified about the source of some particular piece of information, e-mail me.
I wish to publicly commend some of the sources I've employed: