Alexander Rector is prominent in Macon County history because of his
discovery of coal in the Bevier area which led to the lucrative coal mining
business in Macon County.
In 1860, Alexander Rector made his discovery of coal when he was digging
a well for farmer Wilburn Hughes 1 1/2 miles west of Bevier.
Alexander Rector was born in 1840 in Lawrence County, Indiana, the son
of John Rector, an attorney, and Mary Neel Rector, from the Rector line which
goes back to the First Germanna Colony in Virginia, founded in 1714. Alexander
Rector came to the Bevier, Missouri area as a young man where he married
Dicy Angeline Reed, daughter of David S. Reed and Elizabeth Wilson Reed,
on October 3, 1861.
Alexander Rector and Dicy Angeline Reed Rector had eight children whose
descendants still live in the Macon County area: John Anderson Rector; Mary
Elizabeth Rector; Louisa Euphemia Rector [Ryon]; James Monroe Rector; Minnie
Rector [Brammer]; Susan Amanda Rector [Sagaser]; Cleveland Alexander Rector;
Adesta Estella Rector [Bragg].
Alexander Rector died May 23, 1906 and is buried in the East Oakwood
Cemetery in Bevier near his son and daughter-in-law, James Monroe and Ida
From--Great-granddaughter of Alexander Rector through daughter Susan
Amanda Rector Sagaser--
Further information about Alexander Rector's discovery of coal in Macon
County, Missouri, may be found in the following publications: Bevier's Black
Diamond Jubilee, Bevier Centennial Book Committee (Chester Shoemaker, Josephine
Muncy King, John R. Amedei, Mary Rowland Evans, Harold Julius, Pansy Zellers
Sagaser), 1958, reprinted 1999, pp. 9-10; General History of Macon County
Missouri, Chicago: Henry Taylor & Company, 1910, pp. 100-101.