Alexander Darnes

Alexander Hanson Darnes

In 1855 at about the age of 15, Darnes was assigned to Edmund Kirby Smith as his personal valet; the youngest son in the family, Smith was 16 years older and by then a captain in the United States Army. Darnes accompanied Smith on tours in the western territories and continued to serve him during the Civil War, when Smith was a general for the Confederacy.

After the South's defeat and the emancipation of slaves, Darnes gained an education. (He was financially helped by Frances Smith Webster, an older sister of General Kirby Smith. She was the widow of Lucien Bonaparte Webster, a US Army officer from Vermont who had died in 1853. Born in Connecticut, Smith Webster retained her loyalty to the Union during the Civil War.) After preparatory work, Darnes attended Lincoln University, a historically black college founded in 1854 in Pennsylvania. Darnes went to medical school at Howard University, a black college founded soon after the Civil War in Washington, D.C. He graduated in 1880 with a medical degree.

Career Darnes returned to Florida after medical school and settled in Jacksonville, where he set up a private medical practice. He was the first black physician in the city and the second in the state. Darnes built a thriving practice operated out of his home on Ocean Street and became a pillar of the community. He won praise for his work during the smallpox and yellow fever epidemics that swept Jacksonville in the late 19th century. These included the devastating yellow fever epidemic of 1887-1888 that swept the South, reaching Jacksonville in the summer of 1888. Not understanding how the disease was transmitted, almost everyone who could afford to fled the city - roughly half the city's population of 25,000. Darnes stayed to help those who remained as best he could. He was assisted by his friend and fellow Howard Medical School alumnus, Lemuel W. Livingston.

Darnes was accepted into the Freemasons, became a member of the local Masonic Temple, and rose to a position of prominence. He became the Florida Deputy Grand Master and High Priest of the Royal Arch Chapter of Washington, D.C. He also was a member of the Mt. Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), the first independent black denomination in the United States. It was established by free blacks in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the early 19th century.

In Jacksonville, Darnes became a friend and mentor to the young James Weldon Johnson, who was 10 when they met, and his brother John Rosamond Johnson.

Legacy and honors 1894, Darnes' large funeral was attended by more than 3,000 black and white citizens of Jacksonville. Obituaries of him were published by more than one local paper. "In 2013, the Kirby Smith Camp 1209 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans discovered that Darnes' gravesite was in disrepair and erected a new marble gravestone."