De Alva Stanwood Alexander

De Alva Stanwood Alexander (July 17, 1846 – January 30, 1925) was an American journalist, lawyer, historian, and member of the United States House of Representatives, serving seven terms from 1897 to 1911 as a representative of New York state.

Early years

Alexander was born in Richmond, Maine, on July 17, 1846, the son of Stanwood and Priscilla (Brown) Alexander, grandson of Campbell and Margaret (Stanwood) Alexander, and a descendant on his mother's side of George Brown, who came from England to Plymouth in 1635. He attended the common schools and moved with his mother to Ohio in 1859. He serving as Private in Union Army from 1862 until the end the American Civil War, enlisted in the One Hundred and Twenty-eighth Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry. After the war, he attended Edward Little Institute at Auburn, Maine, to prepare for college, and then attended Bowdoin College at Brunswick, Maine, and graduated in 1870. He served many years as a member and president of the Bowdoin College board of overseers.

Career

When Alexander moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1870, he was one of the editors and proprietors of the Daily Gazette from 1871 to 1874, and a delegate to the Republican National Convention at Philadelphia in 1872. He married Alice Colby on September 21, 1871.

Alexander then moved to Indianapolis, in 1874, where he was a correspondent for the Cincinnati Gazette. He was secretary of the Indiana Republican State committee from 1874 to 1878. While he was in Indianapolis, Alexander met and formed a friendship with U.S. Senator Benjamin Harrison. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in Indiana in 1877, and went into private practice in partnership with the Hon. Stanton J. Peele until 1881, when he was appointed Fifth Auditor of the Treasury Department, serving until 1885.