David Brown McIntosh
David Brown McIntosh, the younger brother of George & Thomas McIntosh (whose names are inscribed on the War Memorial at Scone) was my grandfather.
He was born at Kilspindie on the 26th of June 1901, and went to school at Glendoick, as did George and Thomas. Had he been born a year earlier he would have been eligible for conscription and neither my mum (Kathleen McIntosh) or her siblings and their offspring, including me, would be around now, had he suffered the same fate as George and Thomas. This is the sobering thing about it all for me.
On a summers evening looking down on the Carse of Gowrie it would be very easy to become overly romantic about the boys childhood in that area, but it would have been a truly wonderful place for him and his brothers to grow up. Like his brothers he worked on the land until he married, and thereafter worked as a roadman. The only other member of that family, who enlisted in the army was another brother, Joseph. After the war he married Elspeth Wilkie and they set up home in Burrelton. The other surviving siblings were Alexander or “Sandy”, who emigrated to South Africa, William, Meg, Jean who worked in service at Murrayshall, and Nell who settled in Cupar.
My late mother had a wonderful and meaningful relationship with her uncles and aunts. Woven into my personality is a love for extended family and ancestors, and my mother is responsible for that. She was born just up the road from Scone at St. Martins Road, Balbeggie. They lived in a roadman’s cottage right beside the Church manse on the corner. However they didn’t attend this church, instead they took the long walk down to the Church of Scotland at St. Martins every Sabbath day. I visited Joseph, Meg, Jean, Nell and of course my granddad twice a year, every year with my parents, and one of the lasting memories I have of them all is their gentleness and homeliness. And so I can only believe had Thomas and George McIntosh survived the hell that was life on the Western Front, they too would have been no different. Their mother Isabella Scott McIntosh lived at Stormont Road in Scone until her death in November 1943, she had been a widow for forty years.
Meg & Jean never married and lived together in a nice house in Perth. Meg died in 1960 and two years later Jean passed away. They were not separated for too long. Joe died aged 87 in Burrelton, but I have not been able to turn up any information on William or “Sandy”. Nell and her husband Peter McQueen died in old age in Cupar, and my grandfather died when he was just 60.
This brief synopsis of the McIntosh family is pretty typical of most families of similar background from the area I’d think. I certainly could see George & Thomas fitting right into this “mould” had they come back home, unfortunately they are numbered among the sixteen million who lost their lives as a result of the 1914-18 conflict.
One hundred years on from the commencement of the Great War, my great uncles have come alive again in the “Scone Remembers” project, the promise that “they would not be forgotten” has been kept in part by it and to their descendants that is very touching, and something I am grateful
Robert Laird. June 2014