Edward McGehee
| Edward McGehee | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 8, 1786 |
| Died |
October 1, 1880 (aged 93) Woodville, Mississippi |
| Resting place | Bowling Green Cemetery, Woodville, Mississippi |
| Occupation | Planter |
| Title | Judge |
| Spouse(s) | Mary (Burruss) McGehee |
| Children | Charles Goodrich McGehee Francis William McGehee John Burruss McGehee Harriett Lucinda McGehee Augusta Eugenia McGehee |
| Parent(s) | Micajah McGehee Ann (Scott) McGehee |
| Relatives | Stark Young (nephew) |
Edward McGehee (November 8, 1786 – October 1, 1880) was an American judge and major planter in Wilkinson County, Mississippi. He owned nearly 1,000 slaves to work his thousands of acres of cotton land at his Bowling Green Plantation.
In the 1830s, McGehee was among a group of major planters who founded the Mississippi Colonization Society, to transport free people of color from the state to West Africa. They intended to remove what they considered the destabililzing threat of free blacks to the slave society. They bought land known as Mississippi-in-Africa, which later became part of Liberia.
Edward McGehee was born on November 8, 1786. His father was Micajah McGehee and his mother, Ann (Scott) McGehee.
After becoming established as an attorney, McGehee was appointed as a state judge in Mississippi. A wealthy cotton planter, he owned the Bowling Green Plantation near Woodville in Wilkinson County, Mississippi. The plantation spread across several thousand acres; McGehee held nearly 1,000 slaves to work this vast area.
Additionally, McGehee owned a textile factory on his plantation, with about 100 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 and free people of color to Liberia in West Africa. The organization was modeled after the American Colonization Society, but it focused on freedmen from Mississippi, where slaves outnumbered whites by a three-to-one ratio.
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