March 5

He was a Revolutionary leader involved in the most famous duel in Georgia history.

Lachlan McIntosh was born in Scotland in 1727 and came to Georgia with a group of Highland Scots to defend the colony’s southern border. He grew up in the Scots settlement of Darien and became a prosperous rice planter. During the Revolution, Georgia’s Provincial Congress chose McIntosh to lead the state’s Continental Battalion despite his limited military experience. This frustrated the ambitions of another prominent leader, Button Gwinnett, beginning a dispute between the two that eventually led to Gwinnett’s death in their famous duel in May 1777.

McIntosh transferred to Washington’s Army at Valley Forge, and eventually commanded the entire Western theater in the Ohio Valley, where he helped establish American claims to the region. McIntosh returned home for the failed siege of Savannah and was captured when the British took Charleston in 1780.

McIntosh County honors the Scotsman who helped secure American independence, born on March 5, 1727, Today in Georgia History.