therefore the document is safe." Judge Cameron met him there at a subsequent term, when he says his language was that the Davie copy is perfectly correct.
The Martin copy may be that
of the day preceding, or the alteration may have been otherwise made in
Yours truly,
R. D. GRAHAM.
Dr. J. G. M. Ramsay, the eminent historian of Tennessee, writes that the Declaration of Independence mentioned by Governor Graham in his address on page twenty-five, as shown by General Andrew Jackson at the Hermitage in the year 1828, to the Hon. Theodore W. Brevard, Comptroller General, and Colonel Isaac W. Hayne, the Attorney General of the State of South Carolina, the declaration being printed on satin and in a gilt frame, with the signatures of the signers attached thereto, was undoubtedly a copy of the resolutions of May 20, 1775. General Jackson unquestionably treated the incident as a well known fact in the history of that region of the State, the memory of which he thus perpetuated. And as Governor Graham says: Let it be noted that at the time of the conversation, the Legislature of North Carolina had never noticed the matter of the Declaration (it remained for subsequent cavillers to doubt its authenticity) and no publication had been made touching it, except the original communication by John McKnitt Alexander, in 1819, the evidence collected by Colonel Polk, in 1820, and two or three letters collected by Mr. Macon; neither had Martin's History yet appeared, for its publication was in 1829.
ALEXANDER GENEALOGY.
John McKnitt Alexander is buried at Hopewell church, ten miles north of Charlotte--not far from the grave of General William Davidson. His tomb bears this inscription:
"Sacred to the memory of JOHN MCKNITT ALEXANDER, who departed this life, July 10, 1817; aged 84."
By his side is his wife, Jane Baine, who died March 16, 1798, aged 30. (The name is spelled Bean on the tombstone)
He left two sons, (a) Joseph McKnitt Alexander, M.D., and (b) William Baine Alexander.
The first married Dovey Winslow, who died September 6, 1801, aged 25, leaving one son, Moses Winslow Alexander, M. D. See the Graham genealogy.
(a) Dr. Joseph McKnitt Alexander was born in 1774, and died October 18, 1841. His son, Moses W., was born May 3, 1798, and died February 27, 1845. Both were well known throughout the country for integrity and skill in their common profession, and in death, as is seen above, were only divided by the space of four years. To distinguish them, the elder was oftener mentioned as Dr. McKnitt, than as Dr. Alexander, and thus came to attest his written communications by the well known abbreviated signature of J. McKnitt.
The Greek name of Alexander had long been the most common patronymic in Mecklenburg, and was borne by no less than seven of the delegates to the convention, or committee,* that assembled on May 19, 1775.
* The term committee in those
ear'y days was sometimes applied even to the Continental Congress (see Jones'
Defence; and the veteran John Simeson, speaker of the authorized County
Committees or Congresses.)
On the other hand, the ancestral name of McKnitt was held by no family in the county, and he accepted the soubriquet from the mouth of those who held him in the highest esteem both in Church and State.
A record of fourteen children, thirteen of whom married and left issue, reminds us of the early days of Israel. Such a people were not dependent on "the historians of the adjacent
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