Alexander Twilight

Alexander Lucius Twilight (September 23, 1795 – June 19, 1857) was an American educator, minister and politician. He was recognized as the first African American to have earned a bachelor's degree from an American college or university, graduating from Middlebury College in 1823. He was ordained as a Congregational minister and worked in education and ministry all his career. In 1829, Twilight became principal of the Orleans County Grammar School. There he designed and built Athenian Hall, the first granite public building in the state of Vermont. In 1836, he was the first African American elected as a state legislator, serving in the Vermont House of Representatives; he was also the only African American ever elected to a state legislature before the Civil War.

His house and Athenian Hall are included in the Brownington Village Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP).

African-American roots Alexander's father, Ichabod, was born in Boston, July 1765. Ichabod's father was black, his mother, white, possibly an indentured servant. Eventually, Ichabod married Mary, described as 'white' or 'light-skinned,' implying she was of partial African descent.

Ichabod and Mary were free and mixed race, of African and English descent. It is unknown if they were born free; they were likely descendants of enslaved Africans and English settlers. Ichabod was a Revolutionary War veteran from New Hampshire. His parents were both listed in the Corinth, Vermont town history as "the first negroes to settle in Corinth where they bought property, moving from Bradford on November 28, 1798. Starting around 1802 when he was eight years old, Twilight worked for a neighboring farmer in Corinth.

Twilight enrolled in Randolph's Orange County Grammar School in 1815 at the age of 20.

Career Twilight's first job was teaching in Peru, New York.

Wanting to create a residence dormitory to accommodate out of town students, from 1834 to 1836, Twilight designed, raised funds for, and had built a massive four-story granite building which he called Athenian Hall.

In 1836, Twilight was elected to the newly established Vermont House of Representatives (Vermont's legislature was unicameral, consisting only of the House until 1836), becoming the first African American to be elected to a state legislature. The Twilight Awards, a special awards show to celebrate teachers, schools and education nonprofits were named for Twilight. Howard Frank Mosher wrote about the Stone House in Vermont Life Magazine, Autumn 1996: I like the way the Stone House still looms up on that hilltop, where the wind blows all the time. There it sits, unshaken and monolithic, as I write this sentence and as you read it, every bit as astonishing today as the day it was completed. What a tribute to the faith of its creator, the Reverend Alexander Twilight: scholar, husband, teacher, preacher, legislator, father-away-from-home to nearly 3,000 boys and girls, an African American and a Vermonter of great vision, whose remains today lie buried in the church-yard just up the maple-lined dirt road from his granite school, in what surely was, and still is, one of the last best places anywhere. An official portrait of Alexander Twilight hangs in the Vermont State House.