ALEXANDER, Lewis Miller 1858-1934

ALEXANDER, AYERS, MANDEVILLE

Posted By: County Coordinator
Date: 7/27/2009 at 11:30:54

HIGH IDEALS, SERVICE MARKED CAREER OF LEWIS M. ALEXANDER

ALWAYS PLAYED ACTIVE PART IN CIVIC AFFAIRS

ACHIEVED SUCCESS AND PROMINENCE IN INDUSTRY;
GAVE GENEROUSLY TO EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

In a life of activity which brought him into association with many important enterprises and many of the nations industrial leaders, Lewis Miller Alexander rose to a position of prominence and achieved a degree of success which indicates unmistakably the quality of his own business talents and the constructive value of his career.

BORN IN IOWA

Mr. Alexander was born near Osage, in Mitchell county, Iowa, on July 12, 1858, a son of Henry and Almira T. (Ayer) Alexander, and member of an old Colonial family of Scottish origin. He was a direct descendant of Robert Bruce, whose son, Alexander McDonald, one of whose descendants was the father of Sir William Alexander, the first Earl of Sterling, born at Sterling, Scotland in 1580, and died in London, in 1640. Mr. Alexander's grandfather was Hugh Alexander, who was born on March 17, 1789, one of ten children in his family, and died near St. Ansgar, Mitchell county, Iowa, on August 24, 1869, being then eighty years old.

Henry Alexander, L.M. Alexander's father, son of Hugh and Cynthia (Mandeville) Alexander, was born at Belleville, Illinois on September 27, 1824, removed with his parents to Lockport, near Joliet, Illinois, where he was engaged as a farmer until he was twenty-one. At this time he went to Chicago, a town of less than fifteen hundred people, and learned the cabinet maker's trade. Mr. Alexander had determined to obtain a more complete education, and accordingly, three years later, entered Mt. Morris Seminary, the first college in Illinois. There he met and in 1851, married Almira T. Ayer of Crete, Will county, Illinois. Together he and his bride gathered their belongings, prepared an outfit and migrated to Iowa, crossing the Mississippi river at Dubuque. They journeyed into the territory which now forms one of the northern tier of counties of the state of Iowa, settling on Cedar River about midway between Osage, Iowa and Austin, Minnesota.

JOINED UNION TROOPS

Henry Alexander preempted a homestead of one hundred and sixty acres and began to cultivate his land. At the outbreak of the Civil War he enlisted as a private in a volunteer regiment, but in 1861, at Omaha, Nebraska, where he went with these troops, he was rejected for military service because of physical disablities.

The year 1870 was a notable one for this section. The first railroad built its tracks across the fertile prairie lands and Henry Alexander, recognizing the opportunity this created, moved to a small place called Mona, about one mile from the Minnesota state line, where he established himself as a merchant. Fire destroyed his property in the town in 1876, and he next moved with his family to Healdsburg, in Sonoma County, California, where he lived retired until his death on August 14, 1891, at the age of sixty-seven years.

PARENTS OF 11 CHILDREN

On August 9, 1851, at Crete, in Will county, Illinois, Henry Alexander married Almira T. Ayer. She died at Healdsburg, California, on January 21, 1899, in her sixty-fifth year. They were the parents of eleven children, of whom ten lived to reach maturity:

1. Ernest E., born on August 12, 1852, now deceased.
2. Julius H., born on March 6, 1854, a resident of Portland, Oregon.
3. Oliver H., deceased, born on March 26, 1856.
4. Lewis Miller.
5. Frank Lincoln, born on September 20, 1860, now president of the First National Bank of St. Helena, California.
6. Lemuel H., deceased, born on March 21, 1863.
7. Nouis Grant, born on September 6, 1865, also deceased.
8. Edward C., born on June 9, 1868, now deceased.
9. Idelia Mabel, born on July 17, 1871, married the Rev. William Van Auken, and died on June 29, 1892.
10. Mary Maud, who married E.C. Knoernschild, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She died in November, 1930.

NAMED FOR INVENTOR

Lewis Miller Alexander was named for Lewis Miller, inventor of the Buckeye Reaper, co-founder of the original Chautauqua of Jamestown, New York, and founder of what was then the largest Sunday school in the world at Akron, Ohio. He married a sister of Henry Alexander, and Mrs. Thomas A. Edison, wife of the noted inventor, was their daughter. She and Lewis Miller Alexander are consequently first cousins. As a boy Mr. Alexander attended the public schools of Mitchell County, Iowa, assisting in the meantime in the operation of his father's farm. Later he completed his educational training at the Cedar Valley Seminary in Osage, Iowa, where he took a four-year course. At the beginning of his career, Mr. Alexander spent some months as a railway route mail clerk and as a messenger for the American Express company. He studied railroading and telegraphy, but soon turned his attention to the financial field, entering the employ of the Osage National Bank of Osage, Iowa, where he remained as bookkeeper and teller of eight years. In 1882 he joined other members of his family in California, and for two years was engaged as a general merchant at Healdsburg, but again returned to banking and assisted in the organization of the Santa Rose National Bank of Santa Rosa, California. For five years he was cashier of that institution. . . .

CAPTION ON PHOTO:
It was at the Alexander residence in Port Edwards, where death of L.M. Alexander, one of state's most prominent citizens, occurred early Tuesday evening. Private funeral services will be held here Saturday morning to be followed by public services at 10 o'clock Saturday morning from the Port Edwards auditorium.

[The rest of the article was truncated because it does not apply to Mitchell county, Iowa. There is, however much more information in the article, including a photo of his house in Port Edwards, which is from the Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune, Wednesday, Aug. 8, 1934. The article was obtained from www.newspaperarchive.com , July 2009]