Charles McClung McGhee was an American industrialist and financier.
Background
Charles McClung McGhee was born on January 23, 1828 in Monroe County, Tennessee. He was the fifth and youngest child of Betsy Jones (McClung) McGhee, the daughter of Charles McClung, and John McGhee, the grandson of Irish emigrants who had settled in Lancaster County, Pa. From his father he inherited a large estate in lands and slaves.
Education
In 1846 McGhee graduated from East Tennessee University, which is now the University of Tennessee.
Career
During the Civil War he served as colonel in the commissary department of the Confederate army. The war over, he devoted his energies to the financial rehabilitation of his section. He served his alma mater for a number of years, from 1869 to 1884, in the several offices of trustee, treasurer, and secretary and treasurer. He helped to maintain the institution on the meager revenue furnished by the state, which was financially so embarrassed that, instead of paying interest on its bonds held by the university, it issued depreciated warrants. He succeeded in marketing these advantageously by virtue of his financial connections as president of the People's Bank of Knoxville. He further served his university and his city as a member of the Tennessee legislature in the session of 1871-72. Finding the representatives from western Tennessee opposed to the giving of state support to the university in the eastern section, he placated them by a resolution that resulted in the granting of free transportation by the railroads to state students on their way to and from Knoxville. This effort seems the more commendable when it is noted that he already had a controlling interest in Tennessee railroads. When the railroads (for the financing of which the state had gone heavily into debt) proved unprofitable, were thrown into receiverships, and advertised for sale, he and his business friends enlisted the financial support of such northern capitalists as Thomas A. Scott of Pennsylvania and obtained the formation of the Southern Railway Security Company. The various roads running out of Knoxville were consolidated into the East Tennessee, Virginia & Georgia Railroad, of which he became one of the directors. They purchased the state's interest in certain delinquent roads and acquired the Knoxville & Ohio, the Memphis & Charleston, and the Rogersville and Jefferson railroads. The South was joined by one more railway when a road to Macon, Ga. , was built and consolidated. The Alabama & Chattanooga Railroad, too, became another link in the great southern combination. The Atlantic, Mississippi & Ohio Railroad (Norfolk and Western) was added and equipped with a highly ornamented train of red coaches. From the end of the Civil War until his death he was concerned with every railroad that affected the life of East Tennessee. Until his retirement about ten years before his death he was active in the organizations, reorganizations, receiverships, and changes in control of the network of railroads that, completely bankrupt, passed to the J. P. Morgan interests in 1894 and were rehabilitated under the control of the Southern Railway Company.
Achievements
Personality
In spite of the collapse in the financial structure of the railroads, in these years McGhee amassed a fortune, from which he endowed many Knoxville enterprises, notably the Lawson-McGhee Library.
Quotes from others about the person
"Perhaps more than anyone else, McGhee brought about and symbolized the Knoxville which developed in the last third of the nineteenth century. " - Lucile Deaderick, Historian
Connections
On June 10, 1847, he was married to his cousin, the daughter of Hugh A. M. White of Knoxville, Isabella McNutt White, whose only child died shortly after her own death on May 13, 1848. On April 14, 1857, he was married to his first wife's sister, Cornelia Humes White. They had five children.