MacRae family.

Duncan MacRae Sr. (1891-1980) was born in Fayetteville, N.C., on 7 March 1891, the ninth and youngest child of James Cameron and Frances Broadfoot Hinsdale MacRae. He earned a bachelors degree at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill in 1909 and a doctorate in physical chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1917. On 23 June 1920 in Norfolk, Va., MacRae married Rebecca Devereux Kyle, also a native of Fayetteville and a graduate of Saint Mary's School in Raleigh, N.C. They had two children, Duncan Jr., born 30 September 1921 in Glen Ridge, N.J., and Anne Wingate (later Bouton), born 31 March 1925.

After working briefly for the Westinghouse Lamp Company, Duncan MacRae Sr. became a captain in the development department of the Chemical Warfare Service of the United States Army during World War I. He returned to Westinghouse at the close of the war, working as a research chemist at its Bloomingfield, N.J., site. While at Westinghouse, MacRae devised patented improvements in incandescent electric lamps and radio tubes. In 1925, he left to manage the research laboratory of Guggenheim Brothers in Yonkers, N.Y.

Most of the latter part of MacRae's career was spent at the Army's Edgewood Arsenal near Bel Air, Md., beginning in 1929. His time there was interrupted for work with the National Defense Research Committee, 1943-1945, necessitating a temporary relocation with his wife and daughter to Evanston, Ill. In 1953, he retired from Edgewood Arsenal as chief chemist and technical director, but continued to publish in scientific journals for many years. Duncan MacRae Sr. died on 12 April 1980. Rebecca Kyle MacRae died later that year on 22 September 1980.

Duncan MacRae Jr. (1921- ) earned a bachelors degree in chemistry and physics from Johns Hopkins University in 1942 and a masters degree in electronic physics from Harvard University in 1943. He worked on projects for the military in the M.I.T. Radiation Lab, 1943-1946, then returned to study at Harvard with a new focus on social science. In 1950, MacRae completed a doctorate in social psychology shortly before he wed Edith Judith Krugelis on 24 June 1950.

Edith Krugelis was born on 24 January 1919 in Waterbury, Conn., to Lithuanian immigrant parents. She completed a bachelors of chemistry and biology at Bates College in Lewiston, Me., in 1940, and both a masters, 1941, and doctorate, 1946, in zoology at Columbia University. She taught at Vassar College and then spent two years, 1947-1949, as a postdoctoral fellow at the Carlsberg Laboratory in Copenhagen, Denmark.

During their courtship, which began in late 1949, and their first year of marriage, the couple lived in separate states. Duncan had begun teaching at Princeton University while writing his Harvard dissertation and continued to work there until 1951. Edith was conducting postdoctoral research at Yale University. The two moved together to Boston in the fall of 1951, as Duncan took on a postdoctoral study of the Massachusetts state legislature and Edith became the first female member of the biology faculty at M.I.T.. In 1953, the MacRaes moved across country to take positions at the University of California at Berkeley, Duncan with the sociology faculty and Edith as a zoology researcher.

After spending 1956-1957 in France on Duncan's Fulbright scholarship, the two moved to Chicago. Duncan joined the political science and sociology departments at the University of Chicago while Edith taught anatomy at the medical school of the University of Illinois. While in Chicago, daughter Amy Frances was born on 7 November 1958. In 1971, the family moved to Chapel Hill, N.C. There, at UNC, Duncan became the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Political Science and Sociology, and Edith a professor of cell biology and anatomy in the medical school.

Over the course of her career, Edith MacRae published several articles in scientific journals and was honored with teaching awards from the University of Illinois and UNC. In addition to teaching and research, she committed herself to the recruitment and preparation of minority students for medical school, working extensively with the Medical Education Development and 3000 by 2000 programs at the UNC School of Medicine. She died on 7 October 1995.

Duncan MacRae Jr. wrote numerous scholarly articles and authored or edited at least nine books, including Policy Analysis for Public Decisions and The Social Function of Social Science . Among the awards he received are the American Political Science Association's Woodrow Wilson Award, 1968, and the Donald T. Campbell Award, 1983, given by the Policy Studies Organization for outstanding innovation in public policy studies methodology. MacRae is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. On 17 May 1997, he married environmentalist Jane Stiles Sharp (1917- ) in Chapel Hill.

Amy MacRae graduated from Concord Academy in Massachusetts in 1976. She began her undergraduate education at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, then transferred to UNC, where she earned a bachelors degree in zoology in 1981. She then obtained a masters degree in marine science from the University of South Carolina, 1983, and a doctorate in genetics from the University of Georgia, 1988. Amy MacRae has served on the biology faculties of the University of Missouri in Saint Louis and Saint Louis University. She married Gary Kent Brown (1958- ) on 1 May 1992.

To clarify extended family relationships, see The Descendants of James Cameron MacRae and Frances Broadfoot (Hinsdale) MacRae, a family tree last updated in 1998. It is located in Series 2, folder 121.

From the guide to the MacRae Family Papers, 1820-2004, (Southern Historical Collection)