Location: NC 52 just north of Sneedsborough Rd. in Morven
County: Anson
Original Date Cast: 1938
John J. McRae, born in Sneedsborough in Anson County in 1815, moved to Winchester, Mississippi, in 1818 and became a prominent politician in Mississippi and nationally. McRae represented the state of Mississippi in the United States Senate, the House of Representatives, and the Confederate Congress during his career. He also served two terms as governor of Mississippi in the 1850s.
McRae moved with his family to Winchester in 1818 for his father’s business, and moved again to Pascagoula in 1827. He attended Miami University in Ohio, and then studied law. He was admitted to the bar in 1835, and practiced law while also establishing a newspaper, the Eastern Clarion. In 1848 McRae was elected to the Mississippi state legislature, serving until 1850. During his second term as a legislator he acted as the Speaker of the House. McRae was governor of Mississippi between 1854 and 1857, before leaving his post to fill a vacancy in the United States House of Representatives.
In 1851 McRae was appointed to complete the U.S. Senate term of Jefferson Davis. Two years later he was appointed to finish the term of John A. Quitman in the House of Representatives. He withdrew from his position in the House with all other Mississippi representatives following the secession of Mississippi from the Union in January 1861. McRae was elected as a Mississippi representative to the lower house of the Confederate Congress, serving from 1862 until 1864. He traveled in 1868 to Belize in British Honduras to visit his brother and died shortly after his arrival at the age of 53.
References:
William S. Powell, ed., Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, IV, 193—sketch by John L. Bell Jr.
David C. Roller, ed., Encyclopedia of Southern History (1979)
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress online at: http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=M000596
Catherine Bishir and Michael Southern, A Guide to the Historic Architecture of Piedmont North Carolina (2003)