many of her grandchildren who became missionaries in Japan and elsewhere With Sister Alexander Sunday was the longest and best day of the week it was well-known in the community that all work was done on Saturday so that not even meals were cooked but were prepared the day before.
Besides being a prosperous farmer, Francis Alexander was in the Militia, and had an armoury built on his farm, with a rifle range, used extensively for the training of the P.E.I. Militia and later the 82nd Regiment; Francis’ son George was a Captain in the Militia from 1887 to 1895.
On April 1, 1865 Francis deeded his property to his son George and wife Isabella; the parents continued to live at “Erinville”, as the farm was called, until their deaths in 1880 and 1896. George and Isabella raised a large family and were very active in the community, particularly in the church; George was a leader and speaker of the church, and was Sunday School Superintendent for many years.
' A former older resident of Stanhope remembered, as a young boy, seeing the Alexander women in long homespun dresses, cutting the grain with a sickle, and the men coming behind, gathering it up, tying the sheaves and stocking them in the field, ready to be harvested when really dry; then it was gathered off the field and stored in barracks, to be threshed as needed.
In 1900 George Alexander deeded his property to his son George Herbert, who sold it in January of 1912 to David Swan and his son Harry, who later (1922) sold it to Herbert Kielly. The old home with a small acreage is now owned by Joe and Louis Roper and David Jay, who use it as a summer home.
George and Isabella Alexander were the proud parents of very intelligent and successful children, all born in Stanhope. The eldest, Robert Percival, graduated from Mount Allison and after two years’ study at Harvard went to Japan in 1893 as a missionary and teacher. His first wife, Christine Vroom, died in a tragic fire in Hirosaki, Japan. (see below). Robert taught English in a number of schools in Japan; he was at the Methodist School, Aoyama Gakuin, from 1909 until his death in 1940. George Herbert, known as Herbert, was also a missionary; educated at a “Canadian military institution”, he graduated from Moody Bible Institute, and spent some years in Japan and India as a missionary, and also as a British Army chaplain. He returned to North America because of some tropical ailment, and was a Presbyterian minister in Michigan, dying in Detroit in 1954 in a pedestrian-auto accident; he is buried in Stanhope. Their sister Virginia Elizabeth, “Bessie”, received her BA. from Mount Allison and was for most of her life a Methodist missionary in Sapporo, Japan. A third brother, William Webb, was a medical doctor in
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