page_title: Alexander County, North Carolina
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Alexander County, North Carolina / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Based on 1833 map of North Carolina by Brazier, Robert H. B. Shows areas of Iredell, Wilkes, and Surry counties that would become Alexander County in 1847. Major rivers and towns are shown. Created / Published: Fayetteville, N.C.&#160;: Published under the patronage of the legislature by John Mac Rae&#160;; Philadelphia&#160;: H.S. Tanner, 1833.
context_page_description: Alexander County is a county established in the U.S. state of North Carolina in 1847. As of the 2010 census, the population was 37,198. Its county seat is Taylorsville.
  Alexander County is part of the Hickory–Lenoir–Morganton, NC Metropolitan Statistical Area.
context_section_description: Alexander County was formed in 1847 from portions of what were then Iredell (formed in 1788 from Rowan County), Caldwell (formed from Burke County in 1841), and Wilkes (formed from Surry County and Washington District in 1771) counties. Alexander County was named for William Julius Alexander who was a Speaker of the North Carolina House of Commons.  This Piedmont area was settled primarily by farmers, many of Scots-Irish descent, as well as German descent in the southern section of Alexander County.
  Alexander County was established by two acts of the North Carolina General Assembly, one ratified on January 15 and one ratified on January 18, 1847. These acts were not to take effect until it was determined that Caldwell County would have 5,000 people in it. On August 10–11, 1847, the first sale of land in the county seat (Taylorsville) took place.  Taylorsville is the namesake of either John Louis Taylor, Carolina agriculturist and political philosopher, or General Zachary Taylor, the twelfth president of the United States.
  With the proceeds from the sale, the county built the first courthouse on the present site.
  When the American Civil War began, Alexander County was fourteen years old. The 1860 population was 5,837; yet Alexander County ranked high per capita in the number of Confederate soldiers it sent to the war.  The court house records in Taylorsville were destroyed by troops under Major General George Stoneman in a raid on Easter Sunday in 1865.
caption: Area of North Carolina in 1833 that would become Alexander County in 1847, showing portions of Wilkes, Iredell and Surry counties
exif: {"Image Tag 0x000B": "Windows Photo Editor 10.0.10011.16384", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image Software": "Windows Photo Editor 10.0.10011.16384", "Image DateTime": "2019:08:08 08:29:04", "Image ExifOffset": "2242", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "96", "Thumbnail YResolution": "96", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "4516", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "14429", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2019:08:08 08:09:50", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2019:08:08 08:09:50", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "64", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "64", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}