Annie L. Alexander papers

Dr. Annie Lowrie Alexander was born January 10, 1864 near Cornelius in Mecklenburg County, N.C. Her parents were Dr. John Brevard Alexander (1834-1911) and Ann Wall Lowrie Alexander (1834-1893).

Alexander graduated from Woman's Medical College in Philadelphia in 1884. After a year as an intern at the college, she became an assistant teacher of anatomy at the Woman's Medical College of Baltimore, Maryland. She returned to North Carolina in 1887 to practice medicine. Although it is widely claimed that she was the first woman to practice medicine in the South, there is no documentation to prove or disprove this claim. It is more likely that she was the first Southern-born, graduate physician licensed in the South.

Although a supported of advanced education for woman as a general principles, Alexander's focus was always directed towards women not dissimilar to herself. She was also a proponent of eugenics, with her belief in, and support of, eugenics readily supported by numerous documents in the collection.

In 1909 she was elected to her first of several terms as president of the Mecklenburg County Medical Society. She also served on the staffs of St. Peter's Hospital (now Carolinas Medical Center) and Presbyterian Hospital and on the boards of the Charlotte YWCA, the Florence Crittendon Maternity Home, the Associated Charities, and the Cooperative Nursing Association. During World War I, Alexander became a first lieutenant in the army and worked in North Carolina with the U.S. Health Service, serving as acting assisting surgeon at Camp Greene in Charlotte. For 23 years, she served as the physician to the Presbyterian College for Women (now Queens College).

In 1919, Alexander adopted a three-year old orphaned boy and raised the seven children of her deceased brother, Robert. Alexander never married. She died October 15, 1929 in Charlotte from pneumonia, alledgedly contracted from a patient. She is buried in Elmwood Cemetery in Charlotte.

For a detailed biography of Annie Alexander, see: Alsop, J. (2009). Narratives of Class, Gender and Medicine in the American South: The Dr. Annie Alexander Story Gender Forum, (25), 1. https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/narratives-class-gender-medicine-american-south/docview/212044979/se-2