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Alexander Garden Edit Profile

military Soldier writer

Alexander Garden was an American Revolutionary War soldier. Also, he was a writer from Charleston, South Carolina.

Background

Alexander Garden was born on December 4, 1757, in Charleston, South Carolina. He was the son of Dr. Alexander Garden, the naturalist, and his wife Elizabeth Peronneau.

Education

From 1771 to 1775, Garden was kept at Westminster School, London. Thence, he went to college, receiving the M. A. degree from the University of Glasgow in 1779.

Career

Garden was admitted to Lincoln's Inn in 1779. He does not appear, however, to have practiced law. In 1780 he returned to South Carolina and entered the American forces as cornet in Lee's Legion, of Greene's army. The next year he became aide-de-camp to the General, with rank of major, and he saw active service until the evacuation of Charleston in December 1782. His father, prior to his departure from the state, had left in trust for his son 1, 689 acres of land near Goose Creek, a few miles from Charleston. This property was not molested in the confiscation act of February 1782, and it could have been only the petition and service of the son which caused his father's name to be transferred from the confiscation list to that of those amerced twelve per cent. In 1784 he was elected to the Assembly and served one term. Casual references in his Anecdotes tell something of his travels. After the recovery of Charleston, his health being "much impaired, " he went to Philadelphia and visited the interior of Pennsylvania and part of New Jersey; he was in England in 1792, again went north in 1817, and in 1826 visited in Virginia. Garden was in demand for eulogies and orations; he made addresses for the Cincinnati on the deaths of Moultrie and C. C. Pinckney, the eulogy on Pinckney being published at Charleston in 1825. The works for which he is remembered, however, are his Anecdotes of the Revolutionary War in America (1822) and Anecdotes of the American Revolution. Second Series (1828), both published by subscription in Charleston. For the first he had about a thousand subscribers and for the second, about seven hundred. His announced and very apparent purpose was to stimulate the patriotism of youth, but the treatment, while highly laudatory, is not altogether uncritical. Garden died on February 24, 1829.

Achievements

  • Alexander Garden has been listed as a notable army officer, author by Marquis Who's Who.

Works

Views

Garden's heart from the earliest dawn of the Revolution was devoted to the cause of his country, and while still in school he often declared his wish to aid the Americans, but his father, a stanch Loyalist, forbade his return to America.

His announced and very apparent purpose was to stimulate the patriotism of youth, but the treatment, while highly laudatory, is not altogether uncritical.

The characters and incidents are chiefly South Carolinian, but there is also other material, picked up during his trips north and abroad. The volumes are a valuable source for the Revolution; they are entertainingly written, and bear out the author’s claim to his maxim.

Membership

In 1808, Garden became a member of the South Carolina Society of the Cincinnati; from 1814 to 1826, he was vice-president, and from that time to his death, president.

Connections

In 1784, Garden married Mary Anna Gibbes, and evidently became a planter. He had no children, but adopted his wife’s nephew, Alester Gibbes, who took the name Garden and became his heir (Will, Charleston court-house).

Father:
Dr. Alexander Garden

Mother:
Elizabeth Peronneau

adopted son:
Alester Gibbes

Wife:
Mary Anna Gibbes