Carrie Thomas Alexander-Bahrenberg

Carrie Thomas Alexander-Bahrenberg (March 4, 1861 – November 24, 1929) was a member of the University of Illinois board of trustees and a Republican civic and political activist.

Personal She was born as Caroline Thomas in Belleville, Illinois, on March 4, 1861, the daughter of John Thomas of Virginia and Magdalena Von Ave of Switzerland.

She was graduated from Monticello Seminary, Godfrey, Illinois, in 1880 as class valedictorian, at which event she gave an address on "The Differential and Integral Calculus." She also spoke in June 1913 at the 75th anniversary celebration of the founding of the seminary and at a reunion luncheon in June 1915.

Her first husband was Daniel P. or Henry Alexander, who died in 1887.

She died on November 24, 1929, in St. Louis, Missouri, and was buried in Valhalla Cemetery in St. Louis County.

Alexander-Bahrenburg said that she "gladly" gave time to serving on the board, "where the average man with others depending on him possibly could not be so free. It is my belief that this board should always include a woman. The law is lax upon the subject, stating only that a woman 'may' serve. Therefore the woman member should be the one who is willing to fight and hold her ground."

Alexander-Bahrenberg was noted for her years of "outspoken disagreement" with university President Edward J. James, with "her colleagues on the board, and [with] other partisans of the University."

In 1912, she faced opposition in the Republican state convention in Springfield from Mrs. Emmons Blaine, daughter of Medill McCormick, proprietor of the Chicago Tribune.

Other

She spoke at the 44th anniversary of the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association in October 1912 in Galesburg, Illinois. She said that suffrage could not be won by a national political party because it was strictly a matter for the states to decide.

Mrs. Bahrenberg was a member of the Equal Suffrage Society of Moline, Illinois, in October 1912.

She was a delegate to a convention of the National American Woman's Suffrage Association in 1913.

A leader in the Illinois division of the Woman's Relief Corps, the auxiliary of the Grand Army of the Republic veterans' organization, she was elected national secretary of the corps in 1915. The other candidates were Isabel Worrell Ball of Washington, D.C., Lois Knauff of Ohio and Lue Steward Wardworth of Massachusetts.