John Alexander

John Alexander

John Alexander was born in North Carolina on January 27,

1777. He was married to Jane Stevenson, who was born in South

Carolina in 1779.

John had a younger brother, name unknown, and the two

boys lived with another family and worked for their keep. When

818 Families

John became old enough to work, he ran away from this family

and went to an aunt's home, where he lived and went to school.

He married Jane Stevenson there, and their first child was

born in South Carolina. They then moved to Georgia, then to

North Carolina and on to Kentucky in 1809. The young couple

set out to locate somewhere else. About 1815 they were in

northeastern Arkansas, near Batesville, where Stevenson relatives

lived.

After a few years there, they moved on to Lovely's Purchase

in northwestern Arkansas, where the last of their eleven

children, William Long Alexander, was born in 1823.

In 1826 John and Jane Alexander and their children, some of

whom were married, joined five other families (two McGarrahs,

two Simpsons and a Shannon) to settle in what is now

Washington County, Arkansas. They were trespassing on Indian

land. They each had a small log cabin and a field of corn not

quite mature when a command of soldiers came from Fort

Gibson and used swords to cut down the corn and try to move

the families off the land. As soon as the soldiers returned to the

fort, the six families shocked up their corn and remained in their

homes. They had no bread stuff that year, so reported John's

granddaughter Ella Alexander, but they planted the immature

nubbins the next year and had plenty and for seed.

John Alexander had flaming red hair. When he learned that

Indians in the nearby Indian Territory wanted to take his scalp,

the family moved to the east and settled at Twin Springs, built a

more substantial house of logs, two-story with a double fireplace,

and lived there the rest of their days. The 52-year old John

Alexander was a Representative in the very first Territorial Legislature

in 1829 and was reelected in 1833.

According to the 1836 tax records in Little Rock, Arkansas,

John Alexander had 240 acres of first quality land, as well as one

horse and eight neat cattle. His total tax bill was $5.00. The tax

records for him the following year showed him with 320 acres

valued at $3.00 per acre and capital invested in merchandise

listed as $12,000, to raise his tax to $30.00.

Records show that John paid taxes on several slaves. One

slave was Nancy, about 39, and her child Ellen, 5, auctioned and

sold to John Alexander by James H. Stirman for Riggs and Company

on September 5, 1845.

John Alexander died May 27, 1860, and was buried in Black

Oak Cemetery near the Arkansas homeplace.

By: Gladys D. Alexander