Background
Born at Orchilmore, near Killiecrankie, Perthshire, Macintosh was son of a cooper and crofter.
Born at Orchilmore, near Killiecrankie, Perthshire, Macintosh was son of a cooper and crofter.
After attending the parish school, and acting for some time as a teacher, he went to Edinburgh. In 1774 he was acting as one of Peter Williamson"s penny postmen. He next found employment as a copying clerk, and was subsequently tutor in the family of Stewart of Gairntully.
Foreign some years from 1785 he was employed in the office of Mr.
Davidson, deputy-keeper of the signet and crown agent. On 30 November 1786 Macintosh was elected to the honorary office of clerk for the Gaelic language to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and held it until 1789.
In 1789 James Brown of Doune, the sole representative of the nonjuring episcopal clergy of Scotland, made Macintosh as his successor, ordaining him deacon in June 1789, and later priest. Macintosh appears for a time to have had no fixed residence, moving from place to place.
He finally settled in Edinburgh, but made an annual tour through the Perthshire highlands as far north as Banff, Aberdeenshire, ministering to the small remnant who accepted his pastoral authority.
In 1794 Macintosh unsuccessfully raised an action in the court of session against the managers of the fund for the relief of poor Scottish episcopal clergymen, who had deprived him of his salary. In 1801 he was chosen Gaelic translator and keeper of Gaelic records to the Highland Society of Scotland, with a salary. Macintosh"s library of books and manuscripts, numbering about 2,000 volumes, he bequeathed to the town of Dunkeld.
The books were kept together as The Macintosh Library, and additions were made.
But the manuscripts may not have gone to Dunkeld.