County of Christian, Kentucky.  Historical and Biographical.  Edited by 
William Henry Perrin.  F. A. Battey Publishing Co., 1884, pp. 402-403.
Hopkinsville City and Precinct.

JUDGE ALEXANDER D. RODGERS was the son of David Rodgers and L. (Jackson)
Rodgers; he was born in Jackson, Miss., January 30, 1825; his father, who
was a member of the State Senate of Mississippi at the time of his death,
left his son, the subject of this sketch, together with his widowed
mother, in straitened circumstances, and they removed to Kentucky soon
after that event.  Here, with a very incomplete education, the boy found
himself confronted with the problem of life.  Bright, energetic and
determined, he bravely faced the difficulties of his position, the
hardships of poverty, and went to work at a trade.  After serving
faithfully at his apprenticeship, he found, soon after reaching his
majority, that the introduction of machinery, the establishment of
factories, had rendered the profits of his trade so scanty and meager,
that he determined to carve out for himself another career.  Before he was
quite twenty-two years of age, he married Mary E. Underwood, and had other
responsibilities in addition to his widowed mother to call forth his
energies, he first served as Constable, and then, after a most exciting
contest with an older and popular citizen, which is still well remembered
in Hopkinsville by some, he was elected Town Marshal by one majority.  In
the meantime, with the advice and encouragement principally of that quiet
and unpretending, but generous-hearted gentleman, Hiram A. Phelps, who
gave him the free use of his library, he studied law.  After practicing
law and being fully prepared for the duties of the position, he came
before the people of old Christian in 1854 as a candidate for County
Judge, and was triumphantly elected.  This period probably dates his
connection with the more public history of our county, and in order to
correctly estimate his official services, a recurrence to the facts then
existing is necessary.  Our new Consititution had but shortly before gone
into operation.  The first County Judge, had not as yet been fully and
definitely settled by judicial decision.  The people were unused to the
new system.  In addtion to his duties as Judge of the Quarterly Court, his
jurisdiction embraced the important subjects of the probate of wills, the
care and guardianship of the orphan infants of the county as far as to
require full and proper security for the management of their estates, the
settlement with executors, administrators and guardians, and a control and
supervision, in connection with the Court of Claims, of all county
expenditures.  The young Judge maintained the dignity and performed the
duties of his responsible office so satisfactorily, that when he came
before his constituents for re-election in 1858, only one objection in a
warm contest was urged against all his official action:  he had adopted
the maxim, that in county improvements the best was the cheapest, and had
given all his influence to the erection of the stone bridge on the
Madisonville road, in the edge of town.  This as attacked as an
unwarrantable expenditure of the people's money, but Judge Rodgers assumed
his full responsibility, faced the issue fairly and squarely, and defended
his action so successfuly that he was re-elected with a party majority
against him. He continued to perform the duties of his office, honorably
to himself and acceptably to the public until the end of his term in 1862,
when the laws being silent amid the din of arms, and the State being under
military control, he retired to private life.  Private eulogy may be
considered out of place in the history of our county; but the writer, who
was intimate with him from his early boyhood until the time of his death,
may be pardoned for saying that Judge Rodgers was true as steel to his
friends; and they reciprocated his faithfulness, and even now often
exeprience a feeling a sadness at the recollection that he was so untimely
cut off, in the full pride and vigor of his manhood.

Rodgers Jackson Marshal Underwood Phelps
=
MS

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