Served one term as sheriff of Butler county.

The "Genealogical and Personal History of Fayette County, Pennsylvania" by John W. Jordan and James Hadden has a McKee family history describing the ancestry of Dr. Robert Sprague McKee (pp. 116-118). In this history it says that Robert Sprague McKee's great-grandfather was John McKee, son of James McKee of Butler County. John is described as having died in 1864 and is said to have "married Mary A. Crawford, and left issue including a son James". This James McKee was said to have married Catherine Miller. While a James McKee, married to Catherine Miller, is indeed the grandfather of Robert Sprague McKee, I can find no evidence that this James' father was John McKee. In the first place, the James McKee who married Catherine Miller, and settled in Claysville, Washington Co., Pennsylvania is listed as 33 years old in the 1860 census. His supposed father, John, is shown in his mother's household in Butler borough in 1860, at age 46. Not likely to be the father of James. Furthermore, I find no evidence in the 1860 or 1870 census of ANY children of John McKee. Also, the "Family Lineage of the Butler County McKees" by James A. McKee (the nephew of John McKee) says that John was unmarried. My own research and correspondence with other descendants shows that the James McKee in Claysville was the son of John McKee's uncle Robert Hoge McKee and his wife Mary Montgomery. This story IS consistent with 1850 and later census records, as well as other biographical accounts of the McKee families of Butler County.