People
Biographical Sketches: A Surnames
Ebenezer Alexander
Ebenezer Alexander, the son of Adam R. Alexander, was born in Blount County, Tennessee, December 23, 1805, and died at Knoxville, April 29, 1857. Soon after the birth of Ebenezer the family moved to West Tennessee. He was educated at Greenville College, and at East Tennessee College, at Knoxville, and studied law under Judge Joshua Haskell, at Jackson, Tennessee. Having removed to Knoxville, he was married there, October 15, 1829, to Margaret, the fourth daughter of Hugh L. White. He was long a member of Judge White's family, and in charge of his private affairs, while he was away from home on public duties. Mr. Alexander's wife died soon after the marriage, and on January 31, 1833, he married Margaret, the youngest daughter of Charles McClung. In 1838 he was appointed Attorney-General for the Second Circuit and served for a little less than a year. In 1844 he succeeded Edward Scott as Judge of the Second Circuit. Judge Alexander remained upon the bench until his death. He was an able lawyer, a dignified, competent and efficient Judge - one of the best that ever sat upon the bench of Tennessee - and a man whose whole life was pure and without reproach. His son, Ebenezer Alexander, now Professor or Greek at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, was minister from the United States to Greece during President Cleveland's second administration. Source: Joshua W. Caldwell, Sketches of the Bench and Bar of Tennessee (Knoxville, Tennessee, Ogden Brothers & Company, 1898), 263-264.
Richard Wilson Austin
Austin, Richard Wilson, lawyer, diplomat, congressman, was born Aug. 26, 1857, in Decatur, Ala. In 1877 he graduated with the degree of A. B. from the University of Tennessee; and in 1881 graduated with the degree of LL.B. from the Columbian Law School of Washington, D. C. He practiced law in Knoxville, Tenn.; and was manager of the Knoxville Daily Chronicle. For eight years he was United States marshal for the eastern district of Tennessee; and in 1906-08 was American consul to Glasgow, Scotland. In 1909-11 he was a representative from Tennessee to the sixty-first congress. Source: Thomas William Herringshaw, editor, Herringshaw's National Library of American Biography, volume I (Chicago, Illinois: American Publishers' Association, 1909), 176.
