John Jones McRae was a land developer and politician. McRae was a member of the State House of Representatives, U.S. Senator and Governor. His family relocated to South Mississippi in the 1820s, settling in what is now or Perry County. This migration placed him in a frontier society shaped by agrarian values, decentralized governance, and an emerging populist political identity.
McRae pursued classical studies and law, reading under prominent attorneys in Mississippi. His intellectual gifts and rhetorical skill positioned him for early public service.
Claiborne remarks on McRae were about his efforts to promote river traffic to increase economic opportunities especially timber. In 1834 McRae founded the town of Enterprise, MS in Clarke County, MS. He chose the location where the Chickaswhay River is formed by the confluence of the Chunky River and Okatibbee Creek. In 1842 after Claiborne trip, he had cleared the Chickaswhay River enough, so he was able to take a steamboat from Lake Pontchartrain to Enterprise.
In the early 1840s, McRae was elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives, representing the interests of rural southern counties. He gained prominence as an advocate for economic development in the state’s underserved regions and built strong
alliances with figures like Jefferson Davis and Albert Gallatin Brown.
McRae served in the U.S. House of Representatives (1849‚Äì 1851) and was briefly appointed to the U.S. Senate in 1851, filling Jefferson Davis’s vacated seat. He declined to run for re-election, instead focusing on state politics.
Elected Governor of Mississippi (1854–1857), McRae promoted:
Though a moderate on secession initially, his views hardened in the 1850s amid increasing national tensions. During the American Civil War, McRae served in the Confederate Congress (1862–1865), representing Mississippi.
His brother Colin John McRae had been a successful business man in Alabama before and during the war. As the Confederacy collapsed, he left Alabama for British Honduras (now Belize) to start a successful plantation. With the southern economy it tatters, John McRae joined him to have a new start. He became ill soon after his arrival and died May 31, 1868
Source: Trip Through The Piney Woods, PDF pp. 87–88.