Judge Edward McGehee

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_McGehee

Edward McGehee (1786–1880) was an American judge and plantation owner in Jefferson County, Mississippi.

Edward McGehee was born on November 8, 1786. His father was Micajah McGehee and his mother, Ann (Scott) McGehee.

Career

He served as a judge in Mississippi. A wealthy planter, he owned the Bowling Green Plantation near Woodville in Wilkinson County, Mississippi. The plantation spread across several thousand acres and was worked by nearly one thousand slaves.

Additionally, McGehee owned a textile factory on his plantation, with about a hundred slaves working in it. In 1831, he purchased the West Feliciana Rail Road Company in Louisiana.

As early as the 1830s, together with other planters Isaac Ross (1760–1838), Stephen Duncan (1787–1867), John Ker (1789–1850), and educator/minister Jeremiah Chamberlain (1794–1851), McGehee co-founded the Mississippi Colonization Society, whose goal was to send freedmen to Liberia on the African continent. The organization was modeled after the American Colonization Society, but it focused on freedmen in Mississippi, a majority-slave state.

During the American Civil War of 1861–1865, McGehee supported the Union. However, he also sold clothes made in his textile factory to the Confederate States Army. The mansion at his Bowling Green Plantation was burned down by United States Colored Troops in 1864. His wife wrote about the incident in Army & Navy Herald, a Confederate newspaper.

Personal life

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_McGehee#Personal_life

McGehee died on October 1, 1880 at his plantation in Woodville, Mississippi.

Legacy

Author Stark Young (1881–1963) was his nephew. He wrote about the fire that destroyed the plantation house in his 1934 novel, So Red the Rose. He also referred to it symbolically in his 1951 novel, The Pavilion.

The former Edward McGehee Church of the Methodist Episcopal Church, built between 1851 and 1853 and located at the intersection of Lafayette, Girod and Baronne streets in New Orleans, Louisiana, was named in his honor. It was purchased by the Freemasons in 1906 and renamed as the Scottish Rite Cathedral.

The former Edward McGehee College of Girls in Mississippi was named in his honor; Christian author Henry Walter Featherstun (1849–1932) served as its President.

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=69081581

• Reference: Ancestry Genealogy - SmartCopy: Jul 15 2018, 4:32:18 UTC
• Reference: Ancestry Genealogy - SmartCopy: Jul 15 2018, 4:37:50 UTC

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Son of Micajah and Ann Scott McGehee.* Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Feb 6 2024, 14:18:48 UTC