Anna Ellison Butler Alexander (1865-1947) was born on Georgia’s Saint Simons Island, the youngest of eleven children. Her parents, James and Daphne Alexander, were enslaved on the plantations of Pierce Butler (1810 – 1867). She grew up in the Pennick Community west of Brunswick. Anna, a cradle Episcopalian, was dissatisfied with public education. “I pitied the poor little ones,” she recalled, “but cannot teach the church in school.” She joined two of her sisters, Mary and Dora, in the school founded by Mary at St. Cyprian’s Church in Darien.
One Sunday, she attended a service at St. Athanasius Church in Brunswick and fell into conversation with a lay reader, Charles A. Shaw. That discussion sparked her dream of establishing a mission in Pennick. St. Athanasius’ priest, the Rev. J. J. Perry, agreed to baptize “any that I can present for baptism.” Within two weeks, Perry found himself making the trek to Pennick to baptize the first six children of the new congregation.
Anna continued to teach in Darien. Each Sunday she made a round trip of forty miles by boat and foot. In 1897, however, Anna was accepted at St. Paul’s School [now College] in Virginia. She returned three years later to establish a school and revive the church. For the first year, Anna taught at home and supported herself by taking in sewing. Anna raised funds to buy the land and purchase lumber for the school.
During his last year as Bishop of Georgia, Bishop C.K. Nelson visited the mission and was deeply impressed by Anna’s achievements. In 1907 at a service at Good Shepherd in Thomasville as a part of the Convention for Colored Episcopalians, Bishop C.K. Nelson set Anna aside as a deaconess. The term “set aside” noted that a deaconess was not considered ordained, but living a life of consecrated service to God. She would be the only African American to serve as a deaconess, before women could be ordained as a deacon starting in 1974.
In a 1910 report on a United Thank Offering grant that supported her work, Deaconess Alexander wrote, “My life in the mission is a busy one. There are times for weeks when I have not an hour to call mine. Some days, leaving home in the morning, I go to the school-house, and, after finishing the teaching for the day, I take one of the children with me for company, guide, or protection, and walk nine or ten miles, visiting the people, before reaching home in the evening.” At that time in her eighth year of the school, she had 100 students and five of her graduates were studying at her alma mater, St. Paul’s School in Virginia.
She would continue in ministry until 1945, finding support largely from philanthropists in the north as she received no assistance from her Diocese. She served her entire ministry as a deaconess in a segregated church as a separate meeting for black Episcopalians met apart from diocesan conventions from 1907-1947.
Deaconess Alexander’s feast day of September 25 is in the Episcopal Church’s Lesser Feasts and Fasts. Those recognized as saints will typically exhibit the following traits: heroic faith, love, goodness of life, joyousness, service to others for Christ’s sake, and devotion. Through her holiness of life, constant example and teaching, many children received a quality education and went on to technical school and college. She transformed her community for the better in showing Christ-like love.
