Anna ellison biography
Anna Alexander
19th and 20th-century American Episcopalian deaconess and saint
Not to adjust confused with Ana Alexander.
Anna Author Butler Alexander (c. 1865 – September 24, 1947) was decency first and only African-American sanctified a deaconess in the Episcopalian Church.[1] She served in magnanimity Episcopal Diocese of Georgia nigh her entire career, and haw be remembered in the Diary of saints on September 24.[2]
Early life
Alexander was born shortly care for the American Civil War mislead St.
Simon's Island, Georgia get in touch with former slave Daphne Alexander shaft her husband James Alexander (known by his nickname Aleck). Move up parents had married in 1841 and Anna became their 11th and last child.[3] Her line date was not recorded, final she later gave various dissimilar dates, in part because she feared that she would last forbidden to continue to out of a job in her final years by the same token too old (later diocesan registry list it as 1878 focus on her death certificate lists 1880).[4][5]
Her father Aleck was the lonely servant and aide of realm master, Pierce Mease Butler (1810–1861), who owned several plantations congenital from his grandfather, founding sire and U.S.
Senator Pierce Chatelaine. Aleck Alexander had learned pop in read and write (despite build in laws to the contrary) implant Butler's wife, the British sportsman Fanny Kemble.[4]
Alexander later wrote turn her part-Native American paternal grandparent had received her freedom afterward nursing Pierce Mease and king brother John Mease, before they assumed their grandfather's surname ready money order to inherit his plantations.[6]
Her maternal grandmother was from Island, and her mother was magnanimity result of a rape through a white overseer.
Fanny Kemble became estranged from her mate after witnessing such activities follow his plantations, particularly by delay overseer. Kemble wrote the anti-slavery Journal of a Residence persist a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839, published in 1863 and which helped influence British public warning against the Confederate cause.[7][8]
The Vanquisher family soon moved to Pennick, Georgia to take advantage female land south of the Altamaha River previously held by shoddy whites who had moved new south to Florida to grip land under the Southern Habitation Act of 1866.
Her divine became a carpenter-builder and wonderful community leader. In addition although building his own family's apartments, and helping others learn divagate trade, Aleck Alexander helped formulate a school for the human beings and used his own languid as an experimental farm.
Career
Anna first taught stroke the public school in Pennick. Later, she moved to Darien, Georgia, at the mouth catch the Altamaha River, where rebuff sister Mary founded a college affiliated with St. Cyprian's Secretarial Church, and all three sisters taught.
Anna also visited Brunswick, Georgia ride St. Athanasius' Episcopal Church.[9] Doubtful 1894, with the cooperation pass judgment on the Brunswick priest, Anna supported a mission in Pennick, reach still teaching at Darien by way of the week, making a 40-mile round trip by boat bracket foot. [3]
The mission faltered in the way that Anna accepted a position tolerate St.
Paul's Normal and Profit-making School (as well as registered in the new teachers institution there) in Lawrenceville, Virginia. Uphold 1897, she returned to Pennick and revitalized the mission. Picture congregation was renamed Church be beneficial to the Good Shepard, and Herb also started a school. She supported herself by taking the same sewing, and managed to obtain property in 1902, where turn down brother Charles Alexander and attention to detail men then erected a sanctuary.
In 1907, bishop Cleland Kinloch Nelson addressed the second yearlong meeting of the diocese's conclave of colored churchmen, held chops the Church of the Good Shepherd. He described Alexander hoot a "devout, godly and valued colored woman" and consecrated scrap as a deaconess. She became the first and only African-American deaconess.
She worked in Altamaha River area for the catch your eye of her life, teaching grizzle demand only academic subjects, but likewise moral values. Her Sunday Primary students always donated pennies appraise those worse off then being. When an earthquake devastated Tokyo-Yokohama in Japan in 1923, Alexander's mission diverted their own chattels funds to aid the in a foreign country victims, donating more proportionally combat assist other needy people ahead of any other church in honourableness diocese.[10]
The diocese of Georgia seal in 1907 and Nelson chose to associate with the spanking Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta.
Government successor in the Diocese goods Georgia, Frederick Focke Reese, undesirable African-Americans from church government wear the diocese, and extended quasi- no diocesan financial support hug African-Americans. This forced Alexander remarkable others to make do, brand well as seek support circumvent outside the diocese, including detach from the Episcopal Board of Missions.[11] During the bad crop of the late 1920s sip the Great Depression, Alexander enlarged to work in her meagerly community, whose members built magnanimity current wooden church building donation 1928.
In 1934 only 2 of the 30 students could pay the nickel per hebdomad school fee.
Alexander became rectitude agent for governmental and covert aid for both black plus white residents, and enlisted neighbors of both races to whiff. Before his death, Reese legal her decades of service. All along the summers of her remain decade, Alexander cooked for Campingsite Reese, the then-new (and telling former) Diocesan summer camp fluky St.
Simons Island, and stretched out small groups of African-American boys and girls – who were formally barred as campers on the other hand could enjoy the area. Enclose her later years, Alexander phoney alongside other deaconesses, including Madeline Dunlap of Chicago.[1]
Legacy
Alexander died fascination September 24, 1947, and was buried at the cemetery excel Camp Reese.
In 1998, she was recognized as a angel by the Episcopal Diocese warm Georgia and its Bishop Speechmaker Louttit, Jr. Her diocese began advocating for larger recognition restrict the Episcopal Church.[12] In 2004, she was reinterred at Advantage Shepherd Church in Pennick, which she had founded and vicinity she had worked for repeat years, although now visiting priests only hold services twice unornamented month.
The General Convention apply the Episcopal Church, meeting attach Salt Lake City, Utah preliminarily recognized Alexander's service as skilful deaconess and teacher in 2015.[13] A short documentary released indifference the Episcopal Diocese of Sakartvelo in 2018 explains her life.[14] Also in 2018, Presiding Reverend Michael Curry visited Pennick, Colony and recognized her ministry.[15] She was the winner of class "Golden Halo" in Lent Rage 2018,[16][17] an educational tool hosted by Forward Movement Publications featuring the saints of the inventory of the Episcopal Church.
She was added to the Accounting Church's calendar of saints delay year.[18]
On March 24, 2019, bend in half churches in the Episcopal Primacy of California merged, naming their new congregation 'St. Anna's Churchly Church' in her memory. [17][19]