Colin J. McRae
Deputy from Alabama
to the Provisional Congress
of the Confederate States
In office
February 4, 1861 – February 17, 1862
Preceded byNew constituency
Succeeded byConstituency abolished
Personal details
Born
Colin John McRae

(1812-10-22)October 22, 1812
Anson County, North Carolina, U.S.
DiedFebruary 1877 (1877-03) (aged 64)
Puerto de Caballos, British Honduras
(present-day Puerto Cortés, Belize)
Political partyDemocratic
RelationsJohn J. McRae (brother)

Colin J. McRae (born Colin John McRae; October 22, 1812 – February 1877) was an American politician who had served as a Deputy from Alabama to the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1862.[1][2][3]

Biography

Colin J. McRae was born on October 22, 1812, in Anson County, North Carolina.[4] His brother, John J. McRae, served as the 21st Governor of Mississippi (1854–1857).[1] Before the Civil War, McRae was a merchant from Mobile, Alabama.[1] He co-owned a foundry in Selma, Alabama, which made ammunition and iron plate for gunboats.[5] Some of these gunboats were used during the war.[6]

McRae served as Confederate States Financial Agent in Europe from 1862 to 1865.[1][2][3]

In 1867, McRae moved to Puerto de Caballos, British Honduras (present-day Puerto Cortés, Belize), where he purchased land and ran a plantation and mercantile business centered on mahogany.[1][2] McRae died there in February 1877.[4][7] He bequeathed the plantation and mercantile business to his sister and her husband.[1] They leased the plantation to tenants until 1894.[8] The location of his grave, in Belize, is unknown.[4]

In October 2011, a college student at the University of New Hampshire found relics of his Belize plantation house on an archeological expedition in the middle of the Belize Valley.[2] His records were found in Monterey Place in Mobile, Alabama.[1] They are held at the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum, in Columbia, South Carolina.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 The Colin J. McRae Papers, Columbia: South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum
  2. 1 2 3 4 Wright, Lori (October 2011). "Uncovering History: Student Helps Discover Confederate Soldier's Homestead in Belize". The College Letter: Newsletter of the College of Liberal Arts. Archived from the original on July 19, 2013.
  3. 1 2 Andrew Lambert, Colin J. McRae, Confederate Financial Agent: Blockade Running in the Trans-Mississippi South as Affected by the Confederate Government's Direct Procurement of European Goods Borderland Smuggling: Patriots, Loyalties and Illicit Trade in the North East, 1783–1820, The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, August 2009
  4. 1 2 3 The Political Graveyard
  5. ↑ William F. Donnelly, American Economic Growth: The Historic Challenge, Ardent Media, 1973, 152
  6. ↑ Edwin Layton, Colin J. McRae and the Selma Arsenal, Alabama Review, XVIII (1966), 132-133
  7. ↑ General Officers of the Confederate Army, Officers of the Executive Departments of the Confederate States, Members of the Confederate Congress by States. Neale Publishing Company. 1911. p. 157.
  8. ↑ Donald C. Simmons, Jr., Confederate Settlements in British Honduras, Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2001, p. 91

Further reading

  • Charles S. Davis, Colin J. McRae: Confederate Financial Agent (Tuscaloosa, Alabama: Confederate Publishing, 1961).
  • Ray J. Fletcher, Colin J. McRae, Confederate Agent in Europe (Tallahassee, Florida: Florida State University Press, 1956).
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