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Welcome!
I am Rebecca Maloney, Temporary Webmistress and Coordinator for this Alexandria City, VAGenWeb site. I hope you enjoy your visit. Please email me if you have any suggestions or contributions you would like to make. If you would like to adopt this county or other counties in VAGenWeb please contact our State Coordinator Jeff Kemp
HISTORY
Alexandria is located on the west bank of the Potomac
River, six miles below Washington, DC. Much of present-day Alexandria
was included in a 6,000-acre land grant from Sir William Berkeley,
Governor of Virginia, which was awarded to Robert Howson, an English
ship captain, on October 21, 1669. Less than a month later, Howson sold
the land for 6,000 pounds of tobacco to John Alexander. Merchants
petitioned the Virginia General Assembly in 1748 to establish a town.
It was named Alexandria after the original owner, John Alexander.
Alexandria was incorporated in 1779 and was a major port city. Ten
years later, Alexandria and part of the surrounding Fairfax County were
given to become part of the new District of Columbia. Alexandria was
given back to Virginia in 1846. In 1852 it acquired city status and a
new charter. For more information, please visit the wonderful City of
Alexandria official homepage. Don’t forget to check out the neighboring
jurisdictions below, especially Arlington County and Washington, DC.
When Alexandria was part of Alexandria County (now called Arlington)
many of the records are indistinguishable as to whether they are for
county or city. Washington DC also will hold records for the period
that Alexandria was part of Washington. When items are about
Alexandria, inside DC, and about the city, before it was an independent
city, they are still added here, but sometimes it is hard to
distinguish in reading precisely where it goes.
I hope you find my efforts helpful in your research of Alexandria City roots. I am unable to do additional research on your family as I live in Colorado and do not have direct access to records. I post everything I have for all to use.
Make sure you check the "Research Resources" section! There are books on line: History of Alexandria, Seaport Saga and helpful links, look up volunteers and local researchers to help you out.
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We are the chosen. In each family there is one who seems called to find the ancestors. To put flesh on their bones and make them live again. To tell the family story and to feel that somehow they know and approve. Doing genealogy is not a cold gathering of facts but, instead, breathing life into all who have gone before. We are the story tellers of the tribe. All tribes have one. We have been called, as it were, by our genes. Those who have gone before cry out to us: Tell our story. So, we do. In finding them, we somehow find ourselves. How many graves have I stood before now and cried? I have lost count. How many times have I told the ancestors, "You have a wonderful family; you would be proud of us.". How many times have I walked up to a grave and felt somehow there was love there for me? I cannot say. It goes beyond just documenting facts. It goes to who I am, and why I do the things I do. It goes to seeing a cemetery about to be lost forever to weeds and indifference and saying - I can't let this happen. The bones here are bones of my bone and flesh of my flesh. It goes to doing something about it. It goes to pride in what our ancestors were able to accomplish. How they contributed to what we are today. It goes to respecting their hardships and losses, their never giving in or giving up, their resoluteness to go on and build a life for their family. It goes to deep pride that the fathers fought and some died to make and keep us a nation. It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they were doing it for us. It is of equal pride and love that our mothers struggled to give us birth, without them we could not exist, and so we love each one, as far back as we can reach. That we might be born who we are. That we might remember them. So we do. With love and caring and scribing each fact of their existence, because we are they and they are the sum of who we are. So, as a scribe called, I tell the story of my family. It is up to that one called in the next generation to answer the call and take my place in the long line of family storytellers. That is why I do my family genealogy, and that is what calls those young and old to step up and restore the memory or greet those who we had never known before."
by Della M. Cummings Wright; Rewritten by her granddaughter Dell Jo Ann McGinnis Johnson; Edited and Reworded by Tom Dunn, 1943."
John Alexander
Carlyle House Museum
Beulah Baptist Church
Gadby Tavern Museum
If you have questions, contributions, or problems with this site, email:
Coordinator - Rebecca Maloney
State Coordinator: Jeff Kemp
Asst. State Coordinators: Vacant
If you have questions or problems with this site, email the County Coordinator. Please to not ask for specfic research on your family. I am unable to do your personal research. I do not live in Indiana and do not have access to additional records.