Charles Calder Mackintosh: whom did he marry?

Charles Calder Mackintosh was parish minister and, later, Free Church minister in Tain, Ross and Cromarty. He married Anne Brown.

Contrary to other sources, FES, Vol.7, p.73 says that she was the daughter of Robert Brown, minister of Fairlie, Ayrshire. But there was no minister of that name at that time either in the Parish Church or the Free Church in the Fairlie area. So who was she?

George Rainy, minister of Creich, Sutherland, was part of a major web of relationships. FES, Vol.7, p.82 tells us that he had a daughter Ann, born there in 1787, who married Robert Brown of Fairlie, merchant, Glasgow. The OPR show that the following were born in Glasgow to this couple: James (1821); Jean (1822); George (1825); Ann (1824); and Isabella (1827). This is the family who were living in Causeway Lane, Fairlie, in the parish of Largs, in 1841. The family consisted then of Ann (50); Jane (18); Anne (17) and Isabella (13) – all of whom were born outside the parish, and were “Independent”. It is this Ann Brown, the daughter of Robert Brown and Ann Rainy, that Charles Calder Mackintosh married.

There are several factors that point to that conclusion. For example, Charles Mackintosh married Ann Brown in 1847 in Largs, the parish to which Fairlie belonged. Traditionally, the marriage was celebrated in the parish of the bride, so Ann Brown, we can suppose, was normally resident in Largs parish – and, as we have noted, the family of Robert Brown and Ann Rainy were resident there in 1841. But the indisputable evidence regarding the background of Charles Mackintosh’s wife is this. FES, quoted above, show Charles Calder Mackintosh’s children to include: Jemima Helen Mackintosh (1852); Elizabeth Gordon Mackintosh (1853) and Robert Mackintosh (1856); and in the 1861 census these children are living at Rock Haven in the parish of Largs with their grand-parents: Robert Brown, retired merchant, and his wife Ann Brown, aged 74, a native of Creich, Sutherland.

So Charles Calder Mackintosh married Ann Brown, the daughter of Robert Brown and Ann Rainy, and so were brought together two families, both of which were already part of a web of ministerial connections. For Charles Calder Mackintosh’s family see Calder Mackintosh Tree and for Ann Brown’s family see: Bayne etc Tree.