John McIntyre was born September 18, 1847 in Inverness, Scotland. He was the son of John McIntyre and Mary Ann Morrison.

The family emigrated to Canada about 1857. The 1861 Canada census records them living in Stratford in a one storey log house.  The family members included John Sr. age 70 who is listed as a Labourer, his wife and six children:  Donald, John, Catherine, Angus, Anne and Mary. The eldest daughter, Sarah McIntyre, had married John McPhee in Stratford on October 16, 1860.

At age 13, John was a corporal in the Number 1 Company of the Stratford Rifles at the time of the Fenian Raids. To the end of his days, he was proud of being awarded the Queen’s Medal which was given to veterans for their service at that time.

The 1871 census records that John lived with his parents along with his brother and sisters although his eldest brother, Donald, appears to have moved out on his own. The census records that an 8-year old Donald and a 4-year old Annie McIntyre, likely John’s niece and nephew, lived with the family. 
By the 1881 census, John and his brother Angus are listed as merchants and they along with their niece and nephews live with their widowed sister, Sarah McPhee, and her three children.

On June 3, 1884, John McIntyre married twenty-six year old Mary Wingefelder, who was born February 27, 1860, the daughter of Anthony Wingefelder and Barbara Harmann. The family was of German origin who appeared to have emigrated to Canada in the late 1850s. In the 1861 Canada census Anthony is listed as a Miller in Nicholl Township in Wellington County. However, by 1881 the family had moved to Stratford where Anthony’s occupation is recorded as a Machinist. For a time Mary’s brothers ran a butcher shop in Stratford.

John and Mary had three children: John Angus (b. May 3, 1885); Maria (b. Oct. 31, 1891) who married Russell William Baker on May 10, 1911 in Stratford; and Barbara (b. June 8, 1898) who married a Morris Gay.

John purchased the property on Ontario Street in 1885 and during the summer of 1886 had the house at 279/281 Ontario Street built. At the time he was a Livery Stable Operator under the business name McIntyre/Wingefelder Livery. John lived at 281 Ontario for the rest of his life.

Throughout his career John had many occupations in addition to his livery business. He was a grocery merchant, and a flour and feed dealer. Restless in retirement he went back to work, in his late sixties, as a woodworker for the Stratford Chair Company.

John McIntyre died in Stratford on August 13, 1928.