Surprise!

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Along the way in my research on Katy CLINCH, I learned that when her grandfather, General Clinch died on November 27, 1849 in Macon, Georgia, he had amassed an estate valued at over two million dollars. And that was a LOT of money in those days!

So how did he amass this treasure on the salary of a General?  You guessed it!  He married it. He wed Eliza Bayard McIntosh. With this union, he married into the McIntosh family - one of the most prominent and wealthy in Georgia.

The McIntosh history drew me deeper and deeper into the history of this part of the country. As I went along, some of the McIntosh names began to sound strangely familiar. It took awhile to get down to his generation, but when I hit upon Van Allen McIntosh, I had found another example of "It's a Small World After All".

The original McIntosh immigrant was John Mohr McIntosh (1699-1761) of Scotland who came with the original Georgia colonists led by General James Oglethorpe.

John McIntosh's Family Tree

His sons were                   GEORGE                                             WILLIAM I
Grandchildren       John Houston McIntosh              William II (Chief of Lower Creeks)
G-Grandchildren   Eliza Bayard McIntosh (Clinch)        Daniel Newnon McIntosh
2G-Grandchildren   George Washington Clinch               Albert Galatin McIntosh
3G-Grandchildren    Katy CLINCH                                   Van Allen McIntosh

Van Allen McIntosh married a girl from New York City by the name of Alta Lulu.  She had been sent down to Georgia to live with some distant cousins in order to get her away from a budding romance with a boy of whom her family greatly disapproved. But when she got to Georgia, she fell head-over-heels for a young man who was the great-grandson of William McIntosh II whose  mother had been a princess of the Lower Creek Tribes. Van Allen was therefore part Creek Indian. And she married him!

My Own Family Tree
John Gilmour - My G-Grandfather
His sons were        Benjamin Gilmour        +               Wesley Gilmour
Grandchildren       Robert Gilmour                          Alta Lulu Gilmour (McIntosh)
G-Grandchildren   Kay Ellen Gilmour (ME)            Alta Helen McIntosh

SO - my first cousin, (once removed), Alta Lulu Gilmour, married a second cousin of Eliza Bayard McIntosh, the grandmother of Katy CLINCH, the infant girl buried off to the side in  a cemetery one block from my home. 

OK - I'm only related to Katy by marriage but our ancestors could have eaten fried chicken, potato salad and haggis at a McIntosh reunion without having to crash the party. 

Alta Lulu Gilmour and Van Allen McIntosh had a daughter, Alta Helen McIntosh Bearman.  I visited her in Macon Georgia in 2007 after finding her on the Internet. She was a tiny lady, and at age 91, sharp as a tack with a wry sense on humor. We shared our knowledge that both of our branches of the Gilmour family tended to be, shall we say, a bit intolerant of cultural differences.  Her mother, Alta Lulu had been dating a Jewish boy in New York and,  for that reason, she was sent into the hinterlands of Georgia where she met and married an Indian!

Alta Helen told me she had always found irony, satisfaction and happiness in the fact that her mother had married into an Indian tribe. She was very happy with her mixed heritage and relished attending the Scottish Highland Games to mingle, dance and sing with her father's people dressed in kilts and Indian headdress.

 Sadly, I learned just before Thanksgiving 2009 that Alta Helen McIntosh Bearman had passed away.

Celia Mackintosh and Alta Helen McIntosh Bearman