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