June 2, 1929

Thomas Chipman McRae, the last Arkansas governor to have served in Confederate forces during the Civil War, died in Prescott (Nevada County). He is buried in DeAnn Cemetery there. McRae—who was educated in private schools in Arkansas, at Soule Business College in New Orleans, Louisiana, and at Washington and Lee University—was a progressive Democrat who served eighteen years as Third Congressional District representative and two terms as governor. He fought to reform Arkansas’s poorly coordinated highway program and to revise the tax system to provide funding for roads and improvement of schools.