William Alexander
(1848-1937)

William Alexander was the youngest of the new group of Pi Kappa Alpha Founders. Like Tazewell, he had an unusually distinguished ancestry on both sides of his family. He paternal grandfather was Archibald Alexander, one of America's most eloquent preachers as well as one of her greatest theologians, president of Hampden-Sydney College and founder of Princeton Seminary. On his mother's side, William Alexander was related to the Cabells, one of whom was Jefferson's lieutenant in the founding of the University of Virginia.

Alexander was born in New York on September 5, 1848, the son of the eminent theologian, James Waddell Alexander. His mother was of the Cabell family of Charlotte County, Virginia. Although born in New York, Alexander was registered at the University of Virginia and his preparatory work had been done in a Virginia school. During the Civil War period, he had lived for a time in England with his mother, his father having died in 1859.

While attending the University, young Alexander lived in the house of his uncle, Dr. James L. Cabell, who was for years one of Virginia's most distinguished professors of medicine. His bedroom adjoined that of his uncle, and this close contact, added to that with his medical friends in the Fraternity, might have aroused his interest in the study of medicine. However, after three years of study devoted chiefly to the classics, mathematics and philosophy, Alexander, like Taylor and Tazewell, was attracted to the opportunities offered in the field of business.

Soon after leaving the University, Alexander was given a temporary position in the office of the Equitable Life Assurance Society, which had been organized ten years before. He did his work so ably and satisfactorily that the temporary position proved good for more than sixty-five years.

He was married to Frances Gordon Paddock in 1887 and they had one child, a daughter. His wife died in 1931.

His growth with Equitable was phenomenal: a few years after entering the Equitable office, Alexander was elected assistant secretary by the board of directors of the company. In 1880 he was promoted to the secretaryship. For half a century, he supervised numerous publications for Equitable, editing the periodicals for policyholders, its agency bulletins, its material used by agents and the advertising in general. In 1909 he wrote a history of Equitable on its Golden Jubilee and he wrote still another history of the company in 1934, when the company was seventy-five years old. In 1930, he was honored by the company, on the fiftieth anniversary of his secretaryship, for the more than sixty years of service rendered. In the real sense of the term, William Alexander grew up with one of America's great corporations and played a prominent part in the development of life insurance in the United States "from small beginnings to one of the greatest and most useful of industries."

The youngest of the Founders, Alexander also lived the longest. When he was eighty-three, he published his last book My Half Century in Life Insurance (Harper and Brothers, 1935). He was also the author of nine other books.

His grave is in Princeton, New Jersey.

Reprinted from The Oak: A History of Pi Kappa Alpha.

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