Thursday, 26 September 2024 – 7 pm
DOWNLOAD THE 2024.09.26 Anna Alexander EVENSONG BULLETIN
The All Saints Choir will offer Choral Evensong for the feast of Anna Ellison Butler Alexander. The service features music by Maxine Thévenot, Raymond Wise, Margaret Sandresky, and T. Tertius Noble. We’re delighted to welcome The Rev. Deacon Daphne B. Noyes as our guest preacher.
Anna Ellison Butler Alexander was the youngest of 11 children, born to recently emancipated slaves Aleck and Daphne Alexander on Butler Plantation in MacIntosh County, Georgia, in 1865. Her parents were devout Episcopalians, and they also instilled in their children a love of learning. Anna became a teacher, and eventually the only African American to be consecrated as a deaconess in the Episcopal Church. Anna dedicated herself to working for the education of African American children in poor communities. First she helped to found and to run St. Cyprian’s School at St. Cyprian’s Episcopal Church in Darien, and in 1902 she founded a school at Good Shepherd Church in rural Glynn County’s Pennick community, where she taught children to read—by tradition, from the Book of Common Prayer and the Bible—in a one-room schoolhouse. The school was later expanded to two rooms with a loft where Anna lived.
In 1907, she was consecrated as a deaconess by Bishop C. K. Nelson. Deaconess Alexander served in difficult times, however. The Diocese of Georgia segregated its congregations in 1907 and African American congregations were not invited to another diocesan convention until 1947. However, her witness—wearing the distinctive dress of a deaconess, traveling by foot from Brunswick through Darien to Pennick, showing care and love for all whom she met—represents the best in Christian witness.