Our Chapter
Chapter History
The Lachlan Mc Intosh Chapter, NSDAR, was organized on May 2, 1901. The chapter was named in honor of General Lachlan McIntosh, one of Georgia’s two generals appointed by the Continental Congress in the American Revolutionary War and a distinguished Savannah, Georgia, citizen. The chapter was first organized with 18 members. The founding officers were Susannah Davenport Bryan, Regent; Elise Hayward Howkins, Vice Regent; Margaret Arnold Cosens, Secretary; Adelaide Wright Chesnutt, Treasurer; and Mary Eliza Davenport Harden, Registrar. Mrs. Bryan served as chapter regent until 1911. Previously, she was the recording secretary of the Savannah Chapter, NSDAR.
Chapter Patriot
Lachlan McIntosh was a Scottish-American military and political leader in colonial America and during the American Revolutionary War. He was born near Raits, Badenoch, Scotland, on March 17, 1725. His father moved the family to Georgia in 1736 with a Scottish group that would settle in what is now Darien, Georgia. After his father’s death, Lachlan was sent to the Bethesda Orphanage in Savannah under the care of the evangelist George Whitefield.
In 1748, he moved to Charleston, South Carolina, to work for Henry Laurens, a wealthy merchant and slaveholder. There, he met and married Sarah Threadcraft. In 1756, he returned to Georgia with his new wife, settling as a prosperous rice planter near the Altamaha River delta.
By 1770, McIntosh became a leader in the independence movement in Georgia. He helped organize the delegation for the Provincial Congress for the Darien District of St. Andrew Parish. At the Battle of the Rice Boats, he was commissioned as a colonel in the Georgia Militia, raising the 1st Georgia Regiment of the Georgia line, which organized the defense of Savannah and helped repel the British assault. He was then promoted to brigadier general in the Continental Army and put in charge of defending Georgia’s southern flank from British incursions from Florida, which the British held.
In 1779, General George Washington ordered McIntosh to return to the South. He marched with General Benjamin Lincoln from Charleston, South Carolina, to Augusta, Georgia, and then to Savannah.
He was elected to the 1784 Continental Congress but has yet to attend. He held several political jobs in the following years and died in Savannah, Georgia, on February 20, 1806, of a wound received in a duel.
Despite his impressive service and accomplishments, McIntosh is best known for participating in a duel with Button Gwinnett, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, in 1777. Both men were wounded. Gwinnett’s proved to be fatal. ~Written by Suzanne Sanborn.
Chapter Activities & Events
Lachlan Mc Intosh, NSDAR, joins local DAR chapters to observe the following events:
• Independence Day Wreath Laying Ceremony
• Constitution Week
Lachlan Mc Intosh, NSDAR, supports the following projects throughout the year:
• DAR President General’s Projects
• DAR Schools
• Georgia State Society DAR (GSSDAR) State Regent’s Project
• Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) and Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) units, Chatham County
• Ralph A. Johnson Veterans Administration (VA) Medical Center, Savannah
• Tiny House Project, Chatham – Savannah Homeless Authority, Savannah
• Lachlan McIntosh Gravesite Maintenance, Colonial Park Cemetery
If you would like to attend a meeting, please contact our chapter for additional information.