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University Archives and Records Center
University of Pennsylvania
Guide to the
Alexander Family Collection
UPT 50 A 374V
VIRGINIA MARGARET ALEXANDER (1900 - 1949) Record Group, 1920 - 1975
2 Cubic ft.
Prepared by Thomas G. Potterfield, Maureen B. Spectre, and Terry Snyder, assisted by Susan M. Jenkins
Separate guides are available or each Record Group in the Alexander Family Collection:
Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander
Access is granted in accordance with the Protocols for the University Archives and Records Center.
PROVENANCE
Gift of the Alexander family, 1987.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Raymond Pace Alexander's younger sister, Virgina Margaret Alexander (B.S. in Ed., 1920), became close friends with Sadie Mossell during their undergraduate years at the University of Pennsylvania, and it was through Virginia that Sadie and Raymond met. After college, Virginia Alexander attended the Medical College of Pennsylvania and then completed her internship at Kansas City General Hospital.
In 1923 Dr. Alexander began her practice of diagnostic medicine in North Philadelphia. In 1935 she was responsible for bringing Dr. Helen O. Dickens to Philadelphia to join her in the practice of medicine. Later, after graduate work at Yale University School of Medicine, Virginia Alexander entered the field of public health, serving as medical advisor for Howard University from 1937 to 1941 and then, during World War II, with the United States Public Health Service. When she returned to Philadelphia after the war, she specialized in obstetrics and gynecology, serving on the staffs of the Woman's Medical College Hospital, Pennsylvania Hospital and Mercy-Douglass Hospital until her death from Lupus in 1949.
SCOPE AND CONTENT NOTE
The most significant contents of the VMA record group are financial records, mostly estate (approx. 1 cu. ft.; 1944-63) and the Dr. Virginia M. Alexander Scholarship Foundation (1956-1975). The record group also contains a small series of photographs.
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