Portrait Gallery

Patriarch Of His Race:

Rev. Sandy Alexander Has Rightly Earned That Title.

Waited On Daniel Wester

Born a Slave in Virginia, He Was Freed by the Will of His Mistress and Came to Washington Long Before The War— His Memories of Early Times at The Capital are Most Interesting, and He Has Achieved Distinction As A Minister.


Rev. Sandy Alexander

A PATRIARCH of the colored race is Rev. Sandy Alexander, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Georgetown. He was born in Prince William County, Va., January 18, 1818, and came to Washington when President Jackson occupied the White House. To him the war and the assassination of Lincoln are but events of yesterday. In his younger days he waited on Webster and Calhoun, and had a wide acquaintance with the famous men of that day.

Sandy Alexander was born a Slave on the big Hancock estate, Mount Pleasant, between Dumfries and Occoquan. He has dim recollection of the four Hancock sisters who owned the estate, Catherine, Nancy, Margaret, and one other whose name he does not remember. There was not a white man on the place. The estate was divided into four separate farms, and while one was being tilled the other three remained idle. The overseer was a slave named Lewis. One by one these spinster sisters died. The last one to die was Catherine, and when her will was read it was found that she had set all her slaves free.

According to the law, freed slaves were obliged to leave the State within period of twelve months and day, in order to escape being resold. To the older slaves Catherine Hancock had left a sufficient sum of Money to enable them to leave the State, and they moved away to various sections, most of them going North. Sandy Alexander was at that time a little more than twelve years old. He had been hired out to man named Thompson, and soon after Sandy was freed Thompson came to Washington and went into the wood business, bringing Sandy with him. In order to be permitted to remain here, Sandy was obliged to give bond in the sum of $3,000 as a guaranty that he would not become a public pauper. That bond had to be renewed annually, up to the time of the war.

After working at the wood business for some time Sandy got place as waiter in a coffee house on the southwest corner of Pennsylvania avenue and Ninth Street. While employed there he had rather a remarkable experience. He had acquired limited education, being taught at night by a woman living near the Hancock estate, who had a taste for liquor and took this means of earning money with which to purchase it. Owing to his being something of an expert with the pen, he was suspected of writing passes to enable negroes to leave the State of Virginia.

One night party or travelers entered the coffee house where Sandy was employed, and ordered something to eat. Sandy waited on them, and few minutes afterward was terrified to learn that they had come for the purpose of arresting him for writing forged passes. Fortunately he was able to establish an alibi, his employer swearing that he was in the coffee house on the night when he was supposed to have been at Dumfries.

Mr. Alexander next appeared as “Capt. Sandy” on a boat bringing wood up from the lower Potomac. The boat discharged her cargoes on the Tiber Creek Canal; exactly where the Center Market now stands. There was very little there then except wharf and a marsh, where bull frogs croaked and muskrats played hide and seek. Sandy was not long a boatman, however, and shortly afterward entered upon a career which brought him in contact with public men and proved the foundation of his success in life.

Waited on Webster and Calhoun.

He became a waiter in a boarding house on Capitol Hill kept by Mrs. Mount. It was there that he waited on Webster and Calhoun. Subsequently he found employment as waiter at Brown's Hotel, now the Metropolitan. The hotel then consisted of three small brick houses. Every summer Sandy used to go to Old Point Comfort to work in a hotel there, and Brown's Hotel was rebuilt one summer while he was away. The hotel was always the resort of distinguished Southerners Senators Sumner, Butler, and Cobb, and Butler's nephew, Preston S. Brooks, all stopped there. Sandy was at Brown's on May 1856, when Brooks committed the almost fatal assault on Sumner in the Senate chamber in revenge for Sumner's attacks on Brooks' uncle. A year later Brooks died suddenly at Brown's Hotel, the whole affair creating the most intense excitement at the time.

It was at this hotel also that Sandy became acquainted A. O. P. Nicholson, of Tennessee, whose great ambition it was to become President. Pierce was elected he offered Nicholson a place in the Cabinet as Secretary of State, and Sandy Alexander says Nicholson confided in him the reason he would not accept was that it would spoil his chances for the Presidency.

Nicholson had promised Sandy a government position when got into office, and when W. L. Marcy accepted the proud position which Nicholson declined, Nicholson gave Sandy a letter to Marcy asking for appointment for the faithful colored man. Marcy offered Sandy a position which was already occupied by a colored man, and the latter declined. Nicholson's letter was the means, however, of getting Sandy a position in the Post-office Department, and he worked in the dead letter office for over nineteen years. From there he was transferred to the Patent Office where he remained for fifteen years, until he resigned at the latter part of Cleveland's last administration to give his whole attention to the church of which he is now the pastor.

Studied for the Ministry.

While he was in the Post-office Department Mr. Alexander studied for the ministry under Dr. G. W. Samson, of Columbian College, and was ordained by Dr. Samson and Dr. Stephen B. Hill. Mr. Alexander made the address at the laying of the corner-stone of Wayland Seminary. He was also chaplain of the old Senate of the District of Columbia, when Fred Douglass was member. His appointment was met with considerable opposition at the time on account of his color. He has been connected with colored churches for thirtv-three years, or ever since he founded the First Baptist Church of Georgetown, October 5. 1862. with only five members. He preached at the Second Baptist Church eight years, the Macedonia Church seven years, Roswell Church three years, the Nineteenth Street Baptist Church at intervals for two years, and also preached at the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church on several occasions.

Memories of Early Washington

When Mr. Alexander first came to Washington there was a whipping post located close to the City Hall near where the Lincoln statue now stands, where white and colored culprits were whipped every morning. Washington at that time was a wilderness compared to what it is to-day. People used candles to light their houses and walked through the mud when they made calls. The streets were full of holes, where the cobblestones had become displaced, and the mails were brought on horseback. When the first steam cars made their appearance here thousands of people came from all over the surrounding country to witness what to them was a spectacle bordering on the supernatural.

Mr. Alexander married a slave and some years afterward his wife and two children were placed in the Georgia pen at Alexandria to be sold. In some way Mr. Alexander raised the necessary money and bought them. His first wife died during the war, but he has since married again. In spite of his seventy-eight years the pastor is still fairly active, though recently been obliged to preach entirely from memory. He suffered from a severe attack of grip about two years ago, and a few months later he met with a serious accident at the transfer station near the Treasury Department, being run into by a cable car.


Patriarch of His Race: Rev. Sandy Alexander Has Rightly Earned That Title., The Washington Post, Feb 16. 1896, Page 9.

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