Glenurquhart and Glenmoriston are two glens running to the west from the northern shore of Loch Ness. These glens were Clan GRANT lands in the 1700s and among a population carrying a mix of clan names were a dozen or so MACKINTOSH families. A lot of the name spellings have defaulted to MCINTOSH, as my own has, so I will use that spelling.

The lairds of GRANT in these glens were subordinate to GRANT of GRANT, the Clan chief, whose lands were further south.

In the 1700s a number of the MCINTOSH families worked on the Balmacaan Estate in Glenurquhart. My GGGGrandparents, John MCINTOSH and Bessie CHISOLM, (married 1794) were one such family and also lived in the township of Lewiston, a model village set up by the 'good Sir James GRANT'. This occurred at a time when other lairds were clearing their lands of tenants with varying degrees of humanity.

John and Bessie's eldest son, William MCINTOSH,joined the Sutherland Highlanders (93rd Regiment)in 1813 and was posted to Newfoundland. A lot of Irish settled in Newfoundland and there was an anti-British undercurrent which may have been part of the reason for the garrison. As it turned out it was a lucky posting as the rest of the Regiment were returning from South Africa and were diverted to an attack on New Orleans in 1814, which cost them dearly in lives.

Subsequent to hostilities ceasing in the United States the regiment returned to Scotland and was then stationed in Ireland and the West Indies before returning to Scotland. In 1834 William left the regiment and took up a pension. His pension record has him moving about Argyll and Inverness until 1840 when he applied for and was given a position of Inspector in the newly formed Highland Police Force. William was stationed in Portree, Isle of Skye.

William lasted a year in the police force and here the paper trial runs out until the 1851 census. William is in Portree, with a wife Alexandrina (aged 33 born Portree) and a son John Duncan (aged 9 born Brown St, Glasgow). I have never found a record of a marriage or of John's birth. From John's later marriage his mother's name was found to be Alexandrina MACLEOD.

Why William went to Glasgow, I am not sure. Perhaps he was enticed into the Glasgow police force. The Glasgow police records are very scanty for the decade of the 1840s.

There is a record of an Alexandrina MACLEOD marrying a John CAMPBELL (private 93rd Regiment)in 1837 in Portree. The regiment went to Canada in 1838. It included 7 John CAMPBELLs. Some joined Canadian regiments, some disappeared from the muster sheets and I presume some returned eventually to Scotland. If this was my GGGrandmother then I assume that her husband John CAMPBELL died and she remarried William MCINTOSH.

Alexandrina's death was also unrecorded but was between 1851 and 1861. In 1861 William is in Tote, Snizort, Skye and married to Mary NICOLSON. John Duncan is with them aged 19.