From The Columbus Black History Museum: A.C. McGehee, Slave Trafficker

Allen Clements McGehee

December 31, 1827-February 3, 1903

Columbus Slave Dealer and Trafficker 

Allen Clements McGehee was a prominent and active figure in slave trading in Columbus. He was a cotton exporter, a real estate investor and developer, and director of the old National Bank of Columbus. 

In the Muscogee County census for 1860, Allen Clements McGehee's occupation was listed as Negro Broker. 

In the Columbus Directory of 1860, one of the three centers of slave trade in Columbus was the establishment of S. J. Hatcher and A.C. McGhee on Broadway. The Hatcher & McGehee Negro Book is part of the Chattahoochee Valley Historical Collections in the Columbus College Archives. It was donated to the Archives by Mrs. Lenora Woodall Nilan. 

The book is a record of the purchase and sale of slaves from 1858 to 1860 by Hatcher & McGehee, one of three slave trading companies that operated in Columbus. 

The company was run by Samuel J Hatcher, a native of Virginia, and Allen Clements McGehee, a native of Jones County, Georgia. According to the 1860 Columbus City Directory, the other two "slave depots" were Harrison & Pitts and S. Ogletree. 

During the Civil War A. C. McGehee was named agent for the district which included Muscogee, Harris, Talbot, and Chattahoochee Counties to superintend the impressments of slaves to work on the fortification at Savannah in 1862.

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