Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/33

ALEXANDER of Amherst College and was one of the original trustees of Thayer Academy of Braintree.

In 1818 he married Anne, daughter of Capt. Edmund Kimball, of Newburyport, and had six children. He was totally blind for the last five or six years of his life.

Some of his writings are: "The Early History of the Medical Profession in the County of Norfolk," May 10, 1853, Boston, 1853; "Memoir of Bartholomew Brown, Esquire," Randolph, 1862; "Memorial of the Descendants of the Hon. John Alden," 1867, p. 184, "Notice of the Founders of the Massachusetts Medical Society" and "Historical Sketch of the Origin and Progress of the Massachusetts Medical Society," 1839.

Dr. Alden was a bibliophile and built up a private library of rare books and pamphlets, especially those appertaining to the Civil War and the ecclesiastical history of New England. He had a strong love for antiquarian and genealogical pursuits, joining the New England Historic Genealogical Society in 1846, the year after its organization. As a lecturer on temperance he was well known and equally as a singer. Even when eighty-one years old he made one of the great chorus of the National Peace Jubilee in Boston, in 1869.

Dr. Alden died at his home in Randolph, January 26, 1881, aged ninety-three. There is a portrait in the New England Historic Genealogical Register, 1881, p. 213.



Alexander, Ashton (1772–1855)

Founder and first secretary of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland, provost of the University of Maryland, Alexander was born in 1772, near Arlington, Alexandria County, Virginia. The town of Alexandria was named after his ancestors, who owned large tracts of land in its vicinity. His father commanded a company of horse in the Continental Army at the commencement of the Revolution. His youth was spent in Jefferson County, Virginia, where he was educated at a private institution and studied medicine under Dr. Philip Thomas, of Frederick, Md., finishing at the University of Pennsylvania, where he obtained his medical degree May 22, 1795. He settled first in North Carolina and in 1796 went to Baltimore. He was a founder of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland and its first secretary (1799–1801); then he was treasurer (1801–1803) and the last surviving charter member.

Other positions Dr. Alexander held were the following: Commissioner of Health, Baltimore, 1804–05 and again 1812; attending physician, Baltimore General Dispensary, 1801–03; consulting physician, Baltimore Hospital, 1812; president, District Medical and Chirurgical Society, 1819–20, provost, University of Maryland, 1837–50.

Dr. Alexander is described as being a self-possessed and courteous man, neat in his dress which included knee and shoe buckles and gold-headed cane. He died of pneumonia in Baltimore in February, 1855, in his eighty-third year.

He married in December, 1799, a daughter of his preceptor, Dr. Thomas, and had eight children, only three of whom arrived at maturity and all of whom died before he himself did. His first wife dying, he married very late in life Miss Merryman, but had no children.



Alexander, James Franklin (1826–1903)

J. F. Alexander was born on a farm in Greenville district, South Carolina, in 1826, a descendant of good old Scotch-Irish stock and closely related to the Alexanders of Mecklenburg, North Carolina, who in May, 1775, signed the first "Declaration of Independence" known to be in existence in the United States. His grandfather, John R. Alexander, was a soldier in the Revolutionary War His father, Thomas W., removing from South Carolina settled in Gwinnett County, Georgia, when James F. was only five years of age. James graduated at the Georgia Medical College in March, 1849, afterwards settling in the city of Atlanta, at once forming a partnership with a former schoolmate, Dr. John C. Calhoun, but the exorbitant price of six dollars per month rent for an office so deterred young Calhoun that he went back to his old home, Lawrenceville.

Among Dr. Alexander's first patients were a number of small-pox cases whom the other doctors refused to treat. Dr. Alexander gladly availed himself of this opportunity and this incident doubtless affected the whole of his future. The reputation he gained here for his successful management of the cases and obliterating the disease gave him such notoriety that he was ever known, not only throughout Georgia, but the entire South as a successful small-pox expert. During his practice before and after the war he was known to have passed through fifteen or sixteen