He was born on July 12, 1817 ten miles south of Flemingsburg, Kentucky, United States. His father, Gunnell Saunders, a native of Virginia, married Mary Mauzy, likewise a Virginian. When Alvin was about twelve years old the family removed to Springfield, Ill.
At Springfield Alvin attended district school two months each winter.
At nineteen he went west, working on a farm at Mount Pleasant, Iowa, for a short time, and then becoming clerk in a dry-goods store. Realizing the importance of further education, he prevailed on one of the qualified citizens to establish a night school and became a faithful attendant. In 1839 he was appointed postmaster of Mount Pleasant, but seven years later was superseded by an appointee of President Polk's.
In 1846 he was the youngest delegate to the convention that framed the constitution under which Iowa was admitted to the Union. He was elected to the Iowa Senate in 1854 and reelected in 1858. The first Republican state convention, at Iowa City, Feb. 22, 1856, found him one of the participants.
He was chairman of the Iowa delegation in 1860 to the national convention that nominated Lincoln and was active during the campaign in behalf of Lincoln, with whom he had previously formed an acquaintance. On Mar. 26, 1861, Lincoln appointed Saunders governor of Nebraska territory. He assumed office May 15 and three days later issued a proclamation calling for volunteers. In his first official message to the legislature he advocated a transcontinental railway; as one of the Commissioners for the Union Pacific, he delivered the principal address at the ground-breaking ceremonies, Dec. 2, 1863. In January 1861 he urged the legislature to ask Congress to pass a homestead law, an action taken by Congress May 20, 1862. Saunders went to Washington and on Apr. 14, 1865, called upon the President. The signing of his commission was probably Lincoln's last official act. Saunders continued as territorial governor until March 1867, when Nebraska became a state.
In 1868 Saunders was a delegate to the Republican National Convention. The following year he was appointed by the governor as one of the board of regents for the control of the old capitol grounds in Omaha for school purposes, serving as president of the board until it was superseded by the board of education, of which, in 1874, he was a member.
He lost heavily during the financial difficulties of 1875, but met all his indebtedness and in time again accumulated a competence. He actively promoted the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition in 1898, and was the resident vice-president.
Saunders died in his home in Omaha at the age of eighty-two and was buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery.
A member of the church of the Disciples of Christ, he was an incorporator and a zealous promoter of Nebraska Christian University (later Cotner University and after 1919 Cotner College), at Bethany Heights, a suburb of Lincoln.
He was married in Washington, D. C. , Mar. 11, 1856, to Marthena Survillar Barlow of Greencastle, Ind. A son and a daughter were born to them; the latter married the only son of President Benjamin Harrison.
