University of Virginia Library

James Alexander

The author of these sketches was born in Boston,
Massachusetts, March 4, 1804, the eldest son of James
Alexander and Elizabeth Williston, his wife. In Memoirs
which he prepared for his descendants he states that
he came of early colonial stock. His maternal greatgrandmother
was Ann Brown McMillan, a direct descendant
of John(?) Brown who came over in the Mayflower
in 1620. This early ancestor served as town crier
for the village of Boston and his descendants are buried
in the old Copps Hill Cemetery, "from the first settlement
of that place."

According to the Memoirs, "My father James Alexander
was a member of the Antient and Honorable
Artillery Company. Its original designation was The
Military Company of Massachusetts. It was also styled
at different periods The Great Artillery and The Artillery
Company. The name Antient and Honorable Artillery
was not applied until 1720. No military organization
can dispute its title to be the oldest band of citizen-soldiery
in America, the company was formed in
1637. A charter was granted in 1638. The first commander
Capt. Keayne. I also became a member and
did escort duty when Lafayette visited Boston in 1824.
I was first Corporal. The reception of General Lafayette
was one of the most brilliant occasions that ever took
place in Boston. William Alexander the elder brother
of my father was captain of this company in 1805. . . .
My father's ancestors were attendants at the New
North Church."

James Alexander learned printing in Boston and
completed his four-year apprenticeship in 1825. He
came to Charlottesville in December, 1828, to assist in
printing the Memoir, Correspondence and Miscellanies
. . . of Thomas Jefferson, edited by Thomas Jefferson
Randolph of Edgehill. In December, 1832, Alexander
married Rebecca Ann Wills at old Rose Hill near
Charlottesville. After a few years of newspaper editing
in Abingdon, where he published the Virginia Republican
in the early 1830's, he returned to Charlottesville.
This was his home until his death, October 20, 1887.

In addition to editing the Jeffersonian Republican,
which he founded in 1835, Alexander did considerable
publishing for the University of Virginia, including the
early magazine The Museum. Having always strong
antiquarian tastes, he wrote a history of the Albemarle
County court house, of which only one copy is known to
survive and that with many pages gone. During the
War between the States he served as treasurer for the
City of Charlottesville and a record exists of his handling
of Monies for Soldiers in 1861.

In the 1870's he was local editor of his old paper, the
Jeffersonian Republican. Suspended in the spring of
1862 because of war conditions, it did not resume publication
until 1873. It was during 1873-74 that he wrote
his Recollections of Charlottesville, now reprinted.

He was a man of strong religious interests, brought
up in the Episcopal communion, but having joined the
Baptist church before coming to Virginia.

Although a native of New England, Alexander became
a thorough southerner and in 1860-61 his newspaper
was ardently pro-secessionist. He retained connections,

however, with his northern kin and in 1877 he
was visited by his cousin and school-boy chum, Francis
Smith, author of our national hymn, "America." This
poet, upon his return to Massachusetts, wrote: "I shall
always think of Virginia as the land of November roses."

Alexander had two sons and three daughters. Both
sons gave their lives in the service of the Confederacy.
The elder, James Butler Sigourney Alexander, was
graduated from West Point in 1856 in the class with
Fitzhugh Lee, with the signature of Jefferson Davis—
then Secretary of War—on his lieutenant's commission.
He was on duty in Washington Territory at the outbreak
of the war and resigned at once to enter the Army
of Northern Virginia as Captain. Contracting typhoid
fever, he died in West Virginia in 1861. The second
son, W. W. Alexander, was educated at Colonel
Strange's Military Academy in Charlottesville. He had
just entered business as a druggist with his shop "across
from the Post Office at the University," when the war
began, but he volunteered at once and was commissioned
a Second Lieutenant. He was killed in the last battle of
the Confederacy. The male line of the family thus became
extinct, but through the marriage of the daughters
a number of descendants survive.