It began in 1926 as Negro History Week. It was a week-long celebration of those African American men, women, and even children who helped shape and reshape the American cultural landscape. Historian Dr. Carter G. Woodson inaugurated Negro History Week. Decades later it became Black History Month.

From its beginning, African American women from all walks of American life and history were included in this recognition and celebration, especially those whose lives had an impact nationally. Phillis Wheatley, Sojourner Truth, Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, and even Michelle Obama are among the African American women included as celebrants in Black History Month.

Yet there were and are many African American women who had and still have a significant impact on American life—nationally, regionally, and locally—women who typically are not celebrated during the month of February.

One such woman, among the many, is Hannah Sutton Alexander. Hannah did not shape or reshape the American cultural landscape in the same way Wheatley, Tubman, Parks, and others did. The thrust of her impact came decades after her death. It came through the several generations descended from her.

There are very few historical records that mark the life of Hannah Sutton Alexander. What is known about her comes from these few records and from the memory of her passed down orally through the generations of her descendants.

According to historical records, Hannah Sutton Alexander was born a slave in May 1845, probably in Rutherford County or Haywood County. She married Jefferson Ross Alexander in 1861. Family oral history says that Hannah had more than one owner during slavery, and that her last owners were a family in Rutherfordton surnamed Sutton.

Jefferson R. Alexander belonged to Green River Plantation (locally known as the Coxe Plantation). It might be that at one time Hannah also belonged to this plantation and that she and Jeff met there. According to oral family history, Jeff was the son of one of the Alexander men. He was born in 1840 when the owners of the plantation were Sydney and Jane Alexander Coxe. Jane was the granddaughter of Colonel Elias Alexander, one of the early owners of Green River Plantation.

As a young girl of 20 in April 1865, Hannah was on one of Rutherfordton’s main streets and witnessed General Stoneman’s Union Troops come through town and set several buildings ablaze.

When emancipation came for slaves in 1865, Hannah and Jeff had been married about four years, and Hannah had given birth to two of the thirteen children she eventually would have, ten of whom survived into adulthood. Her first-born was a son named Major Ross, and her second child was a daughter named Myra. Before the end of the year, Hannah gave birth to their third child, Samuel.

Following emancipation Hannah and Jeff and their children moved into a house in Union township, not far from the Green River Plantation. In fact, the extended family of white Alexanders and the extended family of black Alexanders maintained an atypically close relationship well into the 1950s.

All of Hannah and Jeff’s nine surviving sons shared names with members of the extended white Alexander family. These included common names such as Joseph and Samuel. They also included uncommon ones such as Major, Collie, Doctor, and Vardry. Vardry shared his given name with Vardry McBee, who was the husband of Jane Alexander and the son-in-law of Colonel Elias Alexander.

By 1879, Hannah and Jeff had bought a 63-plus acre farm in Sulphur Springs and built a family home. It was in this home that Hannah meticulously planned, prepared, and witnessed the wedding of her two oldest daughters (Myra, to William Briscoe in January 1880; and Samantha, to John Carson in August 1896).

Hannah was a strong woman in many ways. She was religiously and spiritually devout. A consistently positive work ethic, a knack for business, and a passion for education marked her life and character. She worked side-by-side with Jeff, and the two established a very successful farm in Sulphur Springs. Hannah also worked outside the home to help increase the family’s assets.

Literate as a slave, Hannah retained a passion for education. She sent all of her children to school. In 1893 she and Jeff sold a ¾ acre plot of their farm to the “colored school committee” for the erection of a school. Having raised their granddaughter, Mary Jane Briscoe, following the death of Myra and William Briscoe, Hannah eventually enrolled her in Lincoln Academy, a private and prestigious boarding school for blacks in Crowders Mountain in Gaston County.

Hannah’s passion for education “passed down through the blood” to succeeding generations. Several of her grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren, and later descendants attended college, becoming teachers, university professors, engineers, nurses, and other kinds of professionals.

Hannah’s religious fervor was replicated in several of her descendants. Some of her sons, sons-in-law, grandsons and granddaughters became ministers and preachers and church officials, and one of her sons, Joseph, was the founder of several churches in South Carolina.

Jefferson Ross Alexander died between 1906 and 1910. Historical records for 1910 list Hannah as a widow living with her son Samuel in Spartanburg County, SC.

Shortly after 1910, Hannah returned to the family farm in Sulphur Springs with her youngest child, Vardry, and his young family. Under Hannah’s management, the two resumed the very successful operation of the farm.
By the early 1920s, Hannah, now over 70, began to decline in health and she had to relinquish most of the management of the farm to her son Vardry. She died in April of 1924 and was buried beside her husband in the family cemetery at the home place in Sulphur Springs.

In 1936 Vardry Alexander sold the family farm in Sulphur Springs. In 1937, he and E. A. Alexander (white) bought adjoining property in Alexander Mills, where Vardry built a small community that included houses for all of his children. Vardry had inherited his carpentry skills and work ethic from both Jeff and Hannah. At that time, the black Alexanders were the only black families (except two) in the town.

In many instances, the institution of slavery disrupted black families. Very little information, written or oral, survives about Hannah’s biological family during slavery. She had a sister named Sukie, but the names of her parents or possible other siblings and relatives have passed from memory.

This consequence of slavery no doubt bolstered Hannah’s love for family and family ties, which survived in her descendants. She spearheaded several Alexander family reunions until her death, a tradition that continued until well into the 1970s. In the late 1980s the tradition of an Alexander family reunion was revived and continues strong today. Each reunion pays especial tribute to Hannah Sutton Alexander, still the family matriarch.

During this year’s Black History Month we are pleased and honored to pay tribute to the Rutherford Woman named Hannah Sutton Alexander, and to the many Rutherford women like her.