Hints of Residence

 

FamilySearch. Frederick County, Virginia tax list.

John McIntosh appears on the personal property tax list for Frederick County, Virginia (1782-1789). I have a query to the Winchester-Frederick County Historical Society archives to see what else might be available on John.

From Andrew McIntosh's account, John and family were not living in Frederick County for very long, as they packed up for new opportunity in Kentucky in Spring 1784. Before departing Virginia, John and wife Sarah had their first of ten children, James McIntosh. He was born in May 1783 in Winchester.

Battle of Cowpens, 1781

 

Battle of Cowpens by Don Troiani.

One of the worst losses by British forces during the American Revolution occurred at the Battle of Cowpens on 17 January 1781. This influential battle set up the victory at the Siege of Yorktown later in September-October 1781. In the McIntosh family story, our ancestor John McIntosh was in the Battle of Cowpens as part of the cavalry of Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton.

According to Andrew J. McIntosh (John's grandson), John was trapped under his horse after it was shot and was captured by American General Daniel Morgan as his personal prisoner. Morgan's after action report mentions a list of the captured men, but I have not yet located this. Perhaps this is at the Library of Virginia in the Daniel Morgan Papers or the Daniel Morgan Collection at the Winchester-Frederick County Historical Society. Lt. Col. John Moncure's 1996 publication from the US Army's Combat Studies Institute provides a thorough review of the battle in The Cowpens Staff Ride and Battlefield Tour (link, pdf).

Andrew's telling of the story says that Morgan spared John's life and he followed him to Winchester, Virginia. There's so much unknown and lost to time on what contributed to sparing John's life and his fresh start in Virginia.

Welcome to matches by cluster

 

Ancestry ProTools new Cluster feature.

A new clustering tool has appeared in my Ancestry ProTools. I'm excited to put this to work, and see how it differs from the clustering tool on MyHeritage. It is clearly marked as a beta product and Ancestry notes you'll soon be able to adjust the size and make custom clusters.

An example from my Mom's paternal side, does fairly neatly group the largest matches into my Read-Cain (orange) and Whitley-Matthews (purple and green) lines on that side of the tree.

Mom's Paternal view with the new cluster tool.

The maternal view is a bit messier, which probably indicates many of these people in Mexico were related to each other.

Mom's maternal side cluster view.

There's still some bugs to work out. When I ran the tool on my Dad's side of the tree, it would only return a small group of paternal side matches, and left out people I know should be grouped together on the maternal side. It does look promising and should improve over time.

Adding an X to the DNA toolbox

After watching a recent webinar on using XDNA for genealogy (see this 2014 article for a summary, this 2012 blog from Roberta Estes, or this short YouTube video from Diahan Southard of YourDNAGuide for more information), I spent part of the weekend looking at matches on FamilyTreeDNA and Gedmatch. I had completely overlooked this type of DNA, and now see this can be a really useful addition to the toolbox for uncovering matches and inheritance patterns.

If you've transferred a DNA kit to FamilyTreeDNA and unlocked FamilyFinder (their autosomal product), you should be able to see XDNA matches. As an example, below is a partial screenshot (removing any identifying information) from FamilyFinder on my Mom's kit. I've switched to Table View, and clicked twice on the X Match column to pull all the XDNA matches to the top.

FTDNA Table View with X Matches.

The Shared DNA column is showing autosomal DNA in centimorgans. There are other columns further on the right showing mtDNA haplogroups (if a test has been taken), and actions allowing filtering by matches In Common or Not in Common, a link to a family tree (if available) and a notes box. Several of these matches also have profiles on Ancestry or MyHeritage, so this helps identify other connections. I am currently looking at this as another angle on my Vasquez and Amado research questions.

On Gedmatch, this feature has been there for a long time but I didn't know to look for it. Select the kit you want to run a one-to-many DNA comparison on from the drop-down menu (or enter a kit number), and select filter by X DNA. I typically adjust the size to return more matches (perhaps 250), and then I leave everything else as is on the menu and hit the submit button.

Filtering by X DNA matches on Gedmatch.

The first column shows a match number, and a kit number, with the user name and a partially anonymized email address associated with the kit. My image below cuts off those earlier columns to preserve privacy details for the matches from my Mom's kit.

Filtering by X DNA report on Gedmatch.

Again, this is really useful, and it shows most of the largest XDNA matches share no autosomal DNA. I have to scroll down to #10 on the list to see my Mom's 2nd cousin, CD, who I know descends from my 2nd-great-grandparents Vicente Campuzano and Maria Jesus Vasquez through their daughter Concepcion Campuzano. CD has 34.6 cM XDNA in common with my Mom and 211 cM autosomal (209 on Ancestry). It's unclear if she inherited an even 50% from Vicente and Maria Jesus, but I know this 34.6 in common is coming from the Mexican side of the tree as CD won't have any XDNA in common with my Mom's paternal side.

Vicente inherited his XDNA from his mother, Maria Concepcion Amado, so some trace of her XDNA may have passed down to CD through Vicente, but more likely the part in common is from the Vasquez-Suastegui branches of the tree. I still have more to learn about XDNA inheritance and its uses for genealogy. It's great to know these tools are available and I will definitely be using this more in my DNA research questions on the Mexican side of the tree.

Medical education in Edinburgh, 1775

 

Made in Ideogram.

The imagined scene above shows what learning may have been like for John McIntosh while he attended the University of Edinburgh in 1775, listening to lectures by Alexander Monro secundus or William Cullen. This blog written by students (see link) at the university in 2021 also provides a description of how medical education was delivered during the time when John was there.

Photo by Patrick Jones. Edinburgh, 1 July 2025.

John would have also seen this view of Edinburgh Castle, and the growing city below.