ANDREW STERRETT ALEXANDER

The History of West Virginia, Old and New
Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc.,
Chicago and New York, Volume II.
pg. 188


ANDREW STERRETT ALEXANDER, judge of the Court of Common Pleas 
of Kanawha County, is a Charleston lawyer and banker, and is 
one of a number of prominent representatives of this name and 
family running back into the earliest pioneer times of what is 
now West Virginia.

He is descended from Archibald Alexander, who came from Scotland 
in 1737.  His son Mathew lived at Waynesboro, Virginia, and by 
his marriage to Margaret Black was the father of Samuel Alexander, 
grandfather of Judge Alexander.  Samuel Alexander was born at 
Waynesboro May 17, 1784, and subsequently removed to Mason County, 
West Virginia, where for many years he was a justice of the peace 
and was also made sheriff, though on account of age his son 
William performed the active duties of the office.

The wife of Samuel Alexander was Elizabeth Arbuckle, who was born
July 15, 1790, at Fort Randolph, and died July 26, 1860.  She was 
married in 1812.  Her father, William Arbuckle, was born in 
Betetourt County, March 3, 1752, and in 1778 moved to Fort 
Randolph, now Point Pleasant, West Virginia.  He lived there 
fifteen years and then went to Greenbrier County, but in the 
winter of 1796-97 returned to the Kanawha Valley and settled on 
his extensive estate some fifteen miles above Fort Randolph, where 
he spend the rest of his life.  William Arbuckle married Catherine 
Madison, a daughter of Humphrey Madison, niece of Bishop John 
Madison and Governor George Madison, and cousin to President James 
Madison.  Her mother, Mary Dickinson, was a daughter of John 
Dickinson, one of the signers of the Constitution of the United 
States.  The first husband of Catherine, William McClanahan, was 
killed at the battle of Point Pleasant October 10, 1774.

William Arbuckle Alexander, father of Judge Alexander, was born in
Mason County November 3, 1816.  He was the son who performed the
active duties of sheriff under his father, and subsequently became
sheriff of Putnam County when it was created from portions of 
Mason and Kanawha.  He received from his father an extensive tract 
of land in Frazier Bottom, where in 1860 he built a large brick 
residence and where he lived until his death on April 1, 1885.  He 
was elected to the State Senate in 1871.  On December 15, 1860, 
William A. Alexander married Leonora C. Ruffner, daughter of 
Augustus and Mary E. (Rogers) Ruffner and granddaughter of Dr. 
Henry Rogers of Kanawha County.

Andrew Sterrett Alexander, a son of these parents, was born in 
Putnam County August 7, 1867.  As a youth he attended public 
schools, worked on the farm, taught school, and in 1890 graduated 
from the law department of the University of West Virginia and in 
the same year was admitted to the bar at Charleston.  Two years 
later he was elected prosecuting attorney of Putnam County and 
re-elected for a second four year term in 1896.  Judge Alexander 
was democratic nominee for the Senate in 1900 and 1904, and in 1905 
he removed to Charleston, where a large and profitable clientage 
sought he professional energies.  He was appointed city solicitor 
in 1907 and for a second term in 1911.  He was also one of the 
incorporators and the secretary and treasurer of the Southern 
States Mutual Life Insurance Company, now the George Washington 
Life Insurance Company, when it was first organized.

He was elected judge of the Court of Common Pleas for Kanawha 
County in November, 1916, and began his eight year term January 1, 
1917.  Judge Alexander is also vice president and director of the 
Kanawha National Bank of Charleston, was organizer and first 
president of the bank of Winfield in Putnam County, and is 
director of the Putnam County Bank at Hurricane.

In October, 1921, the rare honor, that of thirty-third degree in 
Scottish Rite Masonry, was conferred upon Judge Alexander by the
Supreme Council of Scottish Rite masonry for the Southern 
Jurisdiction at Washington.  He is a Knight Templar Mason, a past
commander of Kanawha Commandery No. 4, and is a past potentate of
Beni-Kedem Temple, Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, at Charleston.
Judge Alexander is an elder in the First Presbyterian Church at
Charleston, and his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather
were Presbyterian elders in their time.

Judge Alexander married in Greenbriar County Elizabeth S. Mann, 
granddaughter of William Mann, a pioneer of that county and 
daughter of Mathew Mann, who was a farmer and banker.  Judge and 
Mrs. Alexander have three children:  Andrew Sterling, Leonora 
Ruffner and Mathew Mann Alexander.


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