(16 June 1852-3 June 1932), businessman. (A. B. McRae, Alexander B. McRae) (Date of birth 1853 also found) Born in Alexandria, GC. Parents: Donald McRae and his wife Isabella (Bella) Munro of the Maxville area (names for this couple are also found as Alexander McRae and his wife Elizabeth). A. B. McRae was only a few days old when his mother died, and his father died six years later. Consequently, he was raised by his grandparents. He went in 1872 or 1873 to California, where he had been offered the position of bookkeeper in a business office in San Francisco (another source states Sacramento). Deciding, however, instead of following this opportunity to go into business on his own, he bought timberland in the area of Roseville, California, and became a supplier of railway ties and cordwood for the locomotives. He was married at Sacramento, Calif., on 28 Jan. 1876, to Margaret Kerr (born 17 Jan. 1856), a native of New Brunswick whose family on her mother’s side were among the pioneer landowners at Roseville. At the time of her husband’s death, she was described as having “resided in Roseville longer than any other woman.”
After his marriage, McRae purchased ranchland at Roseville and engaged in “extensive farming,” being active especially in the wholesale hay and grain business (for which he constructed “a string of brick warehouses” in Roseville), and in the rearing of quality horses. From about 1905, when the Southern Pacific Railroad began to expand its interests in Roseville, leading to the swift development of the town, McRae gave up ranching, and was active in Roseville real estate and development. He had the commission to buy land for the railroad, and he built “homes and commercial structures” in Roseville. Part of the McRae ranch was itself used for the developing town, and was known as the McRae Tract. He was one of the organizers of the Roseville Banking Company, which for many years was Roseville’s only bank, and he was a large stockholder and one of its directors. He built the “McRae Block,” a Roseville business building dated on its front 1908, and known locally as the “McRae Opera House.” The ground floor was used for offices and stores, and upstairs was the opera house or hall, used for theatrical and other purposes. The building became known as the “social center of Roseville.” In 1912, he donated one of his best building lots for the site of Roseville’s Carnegie Library. He was a Methodist. Politically, he was a Republican. He died in a hospital at Sacramento, Calif. (five children, four surviving him)
Glengarry News 15 July 1932 (from Tribune, Roseville, with note by GN editor on parentage), Standard Freeholder 20 July 1932 * Leonard M. Davis, Profiles Out of the Past (Roseville, 1982) 29 (biog. with portrait) * “Fifty Years of Wedded Happiness Rounded Out by Roseville Couple,” Roseville Tribune and Register, 29 Jan. 1926: report (with portraits) on Golden Wedding celebrations of McRae and his wife, with valuable biog. information on both * Roseville Local History Photo Album, at Roseville Public Library: photographs, with detailed explanatory captions (buildings, portraits) * clipping file at Roseville Public Library * QF variously from sources cited these notes