John Houston McIntosh

John Houston McIntosh, also sometimes spelled John Houstoun McIntosh, (1773-1836) was a wealthy planter in Georgia who helped lead a rebel group during the Patriot War in Florida. Early life and family John H. McIntosh was born on May 1, 1773, in what is now McIntosh County, Georgia. John was the only son of George McIntosh and Ann Priscilla Houstoun. In 1792 John married Eliza Bayard, a woman from a prominent New York family, and they had 3 children, Catherine Ann McIntosh, John Houston McIntosh Jr., and Eliza Bayard McIntosh. Eliza would eventually marry Duncan L. Clinch, who would go on to serve as an officer in the U.S. army during the Second Seminole War. Politician and landowner In 1798, John Houston served on the Georgia constitutional convention. He would then become a justice of the inferior court of Camden County, Georgia. At some point, John began growing rice and cotton at his plantation, called Refuge, on the Satilla River in Camden County. In 1803, he purchased land in Florida and, despite living mostly in Georgia, he took an oath of allegiance to the Spanish crown and was deemed a "colonial subject of Spanish Florida."