{"id":226,"date":"2015-03-17T11:23:32","date_gmt":"2015-03-17T11:23:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/?p=226"},"modified":"2015-03-31T14:41:23","modified_gmt":"2015-03-31T13:41:23","slug":"the-elusive-beginning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/?p=226","title":{"rendered":"The elusive beginning"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_227\" style=\"width: 959px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Newmore.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-227\" class=\"wp-image-227 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Newmore.png\" alt=\"Newmore\" width=\"949\" height=\"534\" srcset=\"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Newmore.png 949w, https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Newmore-300x169.png 300w, https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Newmore-624x351.png 624w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 949px) 100vw, 949px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-227\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Detail from John Thomson&#8217;s Atlas of Scotland (1832), showing the location of Newmore. National Library of Scotland,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/maps.nls.uk\/atlas\/thomson\/519.html\">EMS.s.712(25)<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>I often joke to colleagues that William Macintosh is the most significant eighteenth-century imperial careerist and travel writer\u00a0for whom there is no <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/William_Mackintosh\">Wikipedia entry<\/a>. \u00a0At some point I would like to remedy that omission, but only once\u00a0I feel sure I know some of the basics\u00a0with certainty\u00a0(like when he was born and when he died).<\/p>\n<p>Macintosh is <a href=\"http:\/\/stat-acc-scot.edina.ac.uk\/link\/1834-45\/Ross%20and%20Cromarty\/Rosskeen\/14\/267\/\">listed<\/a>\u00a0(under the heading &#8220;Eminent Men&#8221;) in the entry for the Parish of Rosskeen in\u00a0<em>The Second (New) Statistical Account of Scotland<\/em> (1834\u201345), written by the parish minister, David Carment in October 1838. Carment (who assumed his role in the parish in 1822) notes that Macintosh was &#8220;born at Newmore, in this parish, in the year 1738&#8221;. Carment further notes, however, that registers of births in the parish date only from 1781. It is, therefore, uncertain how much faith can be placed in the 1738 date.<\/p>\n<p>Baptismal records in nearby areas list a number of\u00a0potential candidates: a William\u00a0Mcintosh was baptised in Nairn on\u00a014 March 1736; another (son of James) in Dores (near Inverness) on\u00a031 March 1737; and another (son of William and Issobell [<em>sic<\/em>]) in Petty (near Inverness) on\u00a08 October 1738.<\/p>\n<p>Whether any of these is\u00a0<em>my<\/em>\u00a0William Macintosh is, at the moment, difficult to say. Would Macintosh&#8217;s family have taken him the 60-mile round-trip between Newmore and Petty to be\u00a0baptised when (presumably) it could have been done closer to home? Should I just give up on my attempts at triangulation and accept Carment&#8217;s date as read?<\/p>\n<p>Macintosh&#8217;s date of death is, of course, a <a title=\"A family rift\" href=\"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/?p=102\">whole different question<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I often joke to colleagues that William Macintosh is the most significant eighteenth-century imperial careerist and travel writer\u00a0for whom there is no Wikipedia entry. \u00a0At some point I would like to remedy that omission, but only once\u00a0I feel sure I know some of the basics\u00a0with certainty\u00a0(like when he was born and when he died). Macintosh [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=226"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":282,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions\/282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}