Part of the American History & Genealogy Project

Alice Baxter

Miss Baxter was born in Athens, Georgia, and is the daughter of Andrew Baxter and Martha Williams Baxter. She was graduated with distinction from Wesleyan Female College, Macon, Georgia, which is the oldest chartered woman's college in the world. Miss Baxter's public work has been almost entirely with the Daughters of the Confederacy of Georgia. She is also a daughter of the American Revolution.

The United Daughters of the Confederacy holds a unique place in history. It is a memorial to the storm-cradled Southern Confederacy, which although a lost cause this organization is notwithstanding a strong and growing one. Its objects are historical, memorial, benevolent, social and educational. Much is accomplished on all these lines, and Miss Baxter in her work for the organization has endeavored to foster all its aims, but her greatest interest has been for the educational uplift of the Georgia people. Miss Baxter has served the organization in various capacities for more than fifteen years, a portion of the time as recording secretary, vice-president, and president of the Atlanta Chapter, at other times as corresponding secretary, vice-president and president of the state.

She has for the past four years served the state as president, her term expiring with the State Convention, October 24, 1911. Miss Baxter has builded on the good foundation of her predecessors. There is a handsome $25,000 girls' dormitory attached to the State Normal School, at Athens, which was undertaken during the presidency of Mrs. James A. Rounsaville, continued during that of Miss Mildred Rutherford, and completed after Mrs. A. B. Hull was made state president.

During Mrs. Hull's administration a three-thousand-dollar fund was gathered toward the erection of a girls' dormitory in the Georgia Mountains in honor of Francis Bartow, in connection with the Rabun Gap Industrial School. During Miss Baxter's administration the plans were changed and the fund made the nucleus for a ten-thousand-dollar educational endowment fund, as a memorial to Francis Bartow. This fund is to remain in the hands of the Georgia Division, United Daughters of Confederacy, the interest to be used for education. It has now reached over seven thousand dollars.

It is rare that a woman brings to the duties of a high executive office, so clear a conscientiousness and such absolute devotion to the best that is in the work, as Miss Baxter, the present state president, United Daughters of the Confederacy, of Georgia. The work has developed and grown under her administration, and the part that will last, the educational part, has received an impetus and an encouragement, that cannot fail to be productive of results that will continue as long as the division lasts.

Women of America

Source: The Part Taken by Women in American History, By Mrs. John A. Logan, Published by The Perry-Nalle Publishing Company, Wilmington, Delaware, 1912.