From the Writings of Felix Kuehn... ALEXANDRIA      1224 2026w In his Loneliness in the City of Alexandria One might suspect that whoever selected the name Alexandria for this townsite must have been something of a classical scholar to have chosen the Egyptian city established in 332 B. C. as its namesake.  Alexander the Great, founder of the original Alexandria, a city famed for centuries as possessing the most celebrated library of antiquity, is a well-known historical figure.  Unfortunately, we know almost nothing about the founder of Manitoba’s city of the same name, Mr. John W. Harris, a land surveyor who secured the n ½ 2026 in December, 1876 and, in July 1877, the east and northwest quarters.  Of course, we also are aware that his wife’s name was Susan Elizabeth Harris, for it was in her name that all this property was held.  During the summer of 1877, Mr. Harris surveyed 53 acres into 13.5 blocks containing 270 lots for the city of Alexandria.  This was a busy season for him as he also marked out the townsite of Mountain City that summer. In June 1877, Alexandria post office, the first west of West Lynne, was opened nearby in the home of Mr. John Thompson, a homesteader of August, 1875 on nw 2226w.  Henderson’s Directory for 1877-1878 informs us that the surrounding township, Alexandria as it was known, was well settled and “likely will soon have a post office.” Its two businessmen, according to this publication, were Mr. R. E. Brown, a storekeeper and Mr. Alexander Hazelwood, a carpenter. In spite of the goodly number of settlers living in the neighbourhood and the “great exertions being made to make this one of the principal points in this part of the country, (as noted in Henderson’s Directory for 1878-1879), the growth of Alexandria as a centre of this settlement was not rapid.  Certainly, this was not any fault of the choice for its location, a beautiful level section of prairie overlooking the crossing of Dead Horse Creek by the Commission Trail.  Recalling his impressions in passing through Alexandria for the first time in September, 1879, Fr. Theobald Bitsche, the first resident priest of St. Leon parish in the Pembina Mountain, wrote:  “To my astonishment, I found myself in the midst of innumerable signs indicating many streets and lanes of the future, but I found only a single house serving as the store and place of lodging for the single inhabitant of the place.” “The single inhabitant of the place” was Mr. Tomas McInrue, a bachelor.  By 1878, again according to Henderson’s Directory, Alexandria was also a Methodist church appointment served by Rev. J. M. Harrison of Thornhill.  His home was in 36, Thornhill Township, not far from Nelsonville. The year 1879 brought the Richard Sweet Sr. family to the district.  Early the following year, they purchase an eleven-acre parcel of land on the corner of the Alexandria townsite where they built a home sufficiently large to also serve as a stopping house and store.  This doubled the population and business facilities of Alexandria.  The 5 February, 1881 edition of the Winnipeg Daily Times, in an article entitled “Southwestern Manitoba; Progress in Three Months as Observed by Two Winnipeggers” outlined the latest developments in Alexandria thus: The next morning, they drove to the “city of Alexandria,” a distance of about fifteen miles.  About a year ago, Alexandria consisted of a single house, inhabited by a single man, a Mr. McInrue, who had not even a dog, cat or other domestic animal to keep him company, but who, in his loneliness, carried on the business of a store and post office.  It was very hard at that time even to find the city.  During the interval of one year, however, certain improvements have taken place.  There is now a second store kept by a Mr. Sweet.  Mr. McInrue is still there but he is no longer alone, having taken to himself a wife.  There are also two private dwellings or nearly that number in the “city.” The Sweets were devout Bible Christians, members of one of the early branches of the Methodist church, a faith they shared with their neighbours, the various units of the Elliott family and the John and James Ching families.  As soon as the Sweet home was habitable, Rev. John Greenway, brother of the Hon. Thomas Greenway, came from Crystal City to preach.  Generally, his morning services were at Crystal City; his evening services at Alexandria.  At the June, 1880 conference of the Bible Christian Church, a Re3v. Silas Cunning received an appointment to Alexandria.  Recalled as a popular clergyman and an effective preacher, he made his home with the Sweets and conducted his services in their house.  Early in 1880, a decision was made to build a church and thereafter the story of Alexandria largely centers around this church.  Lumber was purchased in Emerson sixty miles distant and hauled to the building site on the nw corner of the nw ¼ 19-29w, just across the road from the Sweet home.  It was completed in 1881 and dedicated with the name Ebenezer, the Hebrew word for “God is our Help.” In mid-November 1882, the Ebenezer congregation secured Rev. Andrew Gordon as minister.  By now, there was a parsonage, the irst home in Manitoba for Rev. and Mrs. Gordon and their six children three boys and three girls.  It was not completed until the following spring and the Gordons spent their first winter in a house that more resembled a granary than a parsonage.  Some sixty years later their daughter, Annie Gordon, recalling this home wrote: Battling with frost was an hourly job indoors but without danger.  Breakfast was resplendent within diamond-circled walls as every bentin nail was hoar-frosted, giving the walls between the studding the sheen of a fairy palace. In an hour or two the warmer air dissolved the fairy palace and the fairies slid down and turned to ice when they reached the foundationless floor.  When this ice, on a warmer day, started to trickle over the floor, it was a chore for the two younger boys, Bert and Rob, to carefully chop the ice and throw it out.  This task ceased to be fun as the weeks and months of the long bitter winter all too soon changed to milder weather.