Hartley Burr Alexander, Ph.D American philosopher, writer, educator, scholar, poet, and iconographer born Lincoln, Nebraska, on April 9, 1873. Alexander's father, the Rev. George Sherman Alexander , was a Methodist minister and pioneer newspaper editor in Nebraska. These twin sources were to implant in young Hartley a delight in the written word and a distrust of Christianity. His mother, Abigail Smith Alexander , died when he was three and in 1877 his father remarried Susan Godding . Ms. Godding had been a teacher and chairperson in the Methodist School in East Greenwich and at Friends... College in Providence, Rhode Island, and brought with her to the harsh Nebraska frontier a love of art, music and language that was to stay with Alexander for the remainder of his long and productive life. Living on the frontier exposed Alexander to the ways of the First Peoples and was to instill in him an interest in Native religion and spirituality that was to form one of the paths of life that he was to follow.
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