Colin J. McRae

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]

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)

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. The Colin J. McRae Papers, Columbia: South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum
  2. 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. 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. 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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