Wednesday, October 17, 2012

David McIntyre - Ships Ohio and Dale


I had read awhile back that my great-great-Great grandfather David McIntyre had served in the US Navy in the Mexican War from 1846 to 1849.  This info was from his obituary as well as a book of history of Crawford County, Wisconsin.  However, I had no confirmation from any other source.  While I thought it was likely to be true, there is always the possibility he was padding his resume so to speak :-).  My distant McIntire (our families spelled them differently) cousin Kristine had suggested I contact the US archives and so I went on line and in my wandering through their site found a contact email.  I wrote, gave them the particulars on David McIntyre (including maybe McIntire) along with his birth and death dates, location and spouse name. 

To my great excitement, I received an email back confirming that David McIntire (the spelling in their records) was in the Navy and I am now in process of ordering copies of the documents from the file.  Chris, the wonderfully helpful archive specialist  told me in his original reply email that he is sure this is my David McIntire (uses that spelling) because after the war he was in Prairie du Chien, was a blacksmith, and his wife's name was Louisa.  David McIntyre was a blacksmith and in Prarie du Chien was working for the railroad in that capacity.  Chris wrote that David served on the ships USS Ohio and the USS Dale.  So now while I am waiting for the particulars, I am reading information on the Ohio and the Dale and looking forward to getting my copies of the files a few weeks from now. 

Family History hunts are so much like the "whodunnits" that I have always love to read.  And it is addicting like gambling in that you get just enough random reinforcement to keep looking a little longer and hoping to fall into another mother lode of information.  Above is a photo of a drawing of the Ohio during the Mexican war and below it is the Dale.  My hope is that the actual military record files will tell me when he was on each ship so I can match up when he was on each vessel and what events she might have been involved in which he participated.  These photos are from Wikipedia which stated that they were in the public domain. 
More information can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Ohio_(1820) or at

3 comments:

Unknown said...

How cool is that!

Nick Griffin Miller said...

I shall be contacting you as I share the same lineage to David & Louisa McIntyre...actually I am told your line to the Vandervort line is that you are descended from David Vandervort, and I, from his Sister Sarah Louise Vandervort Horel Brown.

So Greetings Cousin! You can email me at the email addy of Gryphon.nick@gmail.com...same with any others in the McIntyre (or McIntire) line! (I was born with the surname Griffin).

Lyn said...

Keep up the good detective work
Lots of McIntyre cousins are very interested