Hugh MacRae

[1] His grandfather and father were businessmen: Alexander had established a railroad and held offices at the city and county levels, while Donald served as a consular official for the British government in Wilmington and invested in various companies.

MacRae graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1885, thereafter moving to western North Carolina to be a mining engineer.

[4] Following the death of his father in 1892, he took control of a Wilmington cotton business, investing considerably in the city's infrastructure.

He said that for the farmers, "superabundance of food was their main trouble", and suggested to occupy and put to "proper use" the remaining fertile, unused land in the United States.

[9] MacRae was instrumental in creating the White Man' Declaration of Independence, even rumored to have been the one to present the document to Alfred Moore Waddell.