McRee, James Fergus

18 Nov. 1794–9 Aug. 1869

James Fergus McRee, physician, was born at Lilliput plantation, Brunswick County, the son of Major Griffith John and Ann Fergus McRee and the brother of Colonel William McRee. He received a medical degree from the Medical College of New York in 1814 and established a practice in Wilmington about 1819. McRee also studied botany under Dr. Nathaniel Hill in Wilmington, specializing in medical botany. He is credited with having introduced to North Carolina such food plants as tapioca, rhubarb, cantaloupe, and artichokes, and he collaborated with Moses Ashley Curtis and Hardy Bryan Croom in botanical investigations.

Participating in local affairs, McRee supported the building of the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad and was one of the organizers of the New Hanover County Medical Society, of which he was also president. He received high praise for his work among victims of a yellow fever epidemic that struck Wilmington in 1821. McRee retired first in 1834 or 1835 and settled at Rocky Point as a planter and a student of botany. He resumed his practice in 1837, however, until a second retirement in 1846.

McRee married Mary Ashe Hill on 14 Nov. 1816. She was the daughter of William Henry Hill, one of President John Adams's "midnight judges" and a brother of Dr. Nathaniel Hill, under whom McRee studied botany. They were the parents of two sons: Griffith John, the historian, and James F., a physician and surgeon in the Confederate army. McRee was a vestryman of St. James's Church, Wilmington. He died suddenly in Wilmington at age seventy-five.