Henry McIntosh was born enslaved on a Kentucky plantation in 1843. After the Civil War broke out, he was forced into wrangling horses for the Confederate Army. McIntosh found a chance to escape, crossing the Ohio River and making his way north to Detroit via the Underground Railroad.

Following the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the state of Michigan established a regiment of Black infantry in the Union Army. Henry McIntosh was among 895 men to join the new regiment, the First Michigan Colored Infantry (later the 102 U.S. Colored Troops/Infantry), serving as a private in Company G. Among the campaigns participated in by the 102nd USCI was General William T. Sherman’s March to the Sea in 1864, where McIntosh’s regiment engaged the enemy, destroyed railroad lines, and built fortifications.

After mustering out in 1865, Henry McIntosh made his way to Lake Forest, joining a small community of 30 African-American residents. He helped organize the African Methodist Episcopal Church, located at Washington and Maplewood Road. He also became a member of the Lake County Soldiers and Sailors Association. 

McIntosh’s first wife, Sarah Martin, died in 1884; the next year he remarried, to Fannie Davis. They lived on Washington Road and had nine children. Henry McIntosh died in 1915 and is buried at Lake Forest Cemetery.