Charles McClung McGhee

Who was Charles McClung McGhee?

Charles McClung McGhee was an American industrialist and financier, active primarily in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the latter half of the nineteenth century. As director of the East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railway, McGhee was responsible for much of the railroad construction that took place in the East Tennessee area in the 1870s and 1880s. His position with the railroad also gave him access to northern capital markets, which he used to help finance dozens of companies in and around Knoxville. In 1885, he established the Lawson McGhee Library, which was the basis of Knox County's public library system.

Historian Lucile Deaderick wrote that, "perhaps more than anyone else," McGhee "brought about and symbolized the Knoxville which developed in the last third of the nineteenth century." A descendant of Knoxville's founders, McGhee established a pork packing operation during the Civil War. After the war, he formed a syndicate that bought and merged two railroads into the ETV&G, gained control of several other railroads, and financed a railroad construction boom that connected Knoxville to most of the eastern United States.