When Orpha Ann Alexander was born on 4 February 1838, in Northfield, Washington, Vermont, United States, her father, Alvah Alexander, was 38 and her mother, Phoebe Houston, was 33. She married William Marks Miles on 26 May 1853, in Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, United States. They were the parents of at least 2 sons and 1 daughter. She lived in Saint Charles, Kane, Illinois, United States in 1850 and Pottawattamie, Iowa, United States in 1850. She died on 4 April 1858, in Fountain Green, Sanpete, Utah, United States, at the age of 20, and was buried in Fountain Green Cemetery, Fountain Green, Sanpete, Utah, United States.
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By 1829 Venus, Illinois had grown sufficiently and in 1832 was one of the contenders for the new county seat. However, the honor was awarded to a nearby city, Carthage. In 1834 the name Venus was changed to Commerce because the settlers felt that the new name better suited their plans. But during late 1839, arriving members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints bought the small town of Commerce and in April 1840 it was renamed Nauvoo by Joseph Smith Jr., who led the Latter-Day Saints to Nauvoo to escape persecution in Missouri. The name Nauvoo is derived from the traditional Hebrew language. It is notable that by 1844 Nauvoo's population had swollen to around 12,000 residents, rivaling the size of Chicago at the time. After the Latter-Day Saints left the population settled down toward 2,000 people.
After the Saints had been chased out of Missouri they moved to a swampy area located next to the Mississippi River. Here they settled and named the place Nauvoo which translates into the city beautiful.
"In October 1845, the newspaper Times and Seasons published a poem written by Eliza R. Snow entitled ""My Father in Heaven."" It has become the well known hymn, ""Oh My Father."" The song is only one in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints hymnbook that referrs to a Heavenly Mother."
Scottish, English, German, and Dutch: from the personal name Alexander, classical Greek Alexandros, which probably originally meant ‘repulser of men (i.e. of the enemy)’, from alexein ‘to repel’ + andros, genitive of anēr ‘man’. Its popularity in the Middle Ages was due mainly to the Macedonian conqueror, Alexander the Great (356–323 BC ) - or rather to the hero of the mythical versions of his exploits that gained currency in the so-called Alexander Romances. The name was also borne by various early Christian saints, including a patriarch of Alexandria (c. 250–326 AD ), whose main achievement was condemning the Arian heresy. The Gaelic form of the personal name is Alasdair, which has given rise to a number of Scottish and Irish patronymics, for example McAllister . Alexander is a common personal name in Scotland, often representing an Anglicized form of the Gaelic name. In North America, the English form of the surname has absorbed cognates from other languages, e.g. Spanish Alejandro , Italian Alessandro , Arabic or Assyrian/Chaldean Iskandar and Iskander , and their derivatives, e.g. Greek patronymic Alexandropoulos.
Jewish: from the adopted personal name Alexander (see 1 above) or shortened from the eastern Ashkenazic (originally Slavic) patronymics Aleksandrovich or Alexandrowicz.
History: A number of Scotch-Irish families of this name landed at New York in the early 18th century. By 1746, six of them were established in NC. Others came in through Philadelphia, for example Archibald Alexander, who came from Londonderry in northern Ireland in 1736 and established himself in VA. — The Revolutionary general William Alexander (1726–83) was always known as ‘Lord Sterling’ to his compatriots, although his claim to the title was denied by the College of Arms in London. His father, James Alexander, was a Jacobite who had fled to New York after the failure of the Jacobite rising in 1715. The claim to the title arose in connection with their ancestor Sir William Alexander, a courtier and poet at the court of King James VI of Scotland (James I of England), who created him Earl of Stirling in 1633.
Dictionary of American Family Names © Patrick Hanks 2003, 2006.
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