Anna Alexander

Anna Ellison Butler Alexander (circa 1865 – September 24, 1947) was the first and only African-American consecrated a deaconess in the Episcopal Church. She served in the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia during her entire career, and may be remembered in the Calendar of saints on September 24. Early life Alexander was born shortly after the American Civil War on St. Simon's Island, Georgia to former slave Daphne Alexander and her husband James Alexander (known by his nickname Aleck). Her parents had married in 1841 and Anna became their eleventh and last child. Her birth date was not recorded, and she later gave various different dates, in part because she feared that she would be forbidden to continue to work in her final years as too old (later diocesan records list it as 1878 and her death certificate lists 1880). Her father Aleck was the personal servant and aide of his master, Pierce Mease Butler (1810–1861), who owned several plantations inherited from his grandfather, founding father and U.S. Senator Pierce Butler. Aleck Alexander had learned to read and write (despite state laws to the contrary) from Butler's wife, the British actress Fanny Kemble. Alexander later wrote that her part-Native American paternal grandmother had received her freedom after nursing Pierce Mease and his brother John Mease, before they assumed their grandfather's surname in order to inherit his plantations.