The Founders of Pi Kappa Alpha

Howard’s father was a medical doctor, who helped establish medical studies at Georgetown University in Washington. As a Quaker, Howard did not bear arms with the Union Army, but worked instead as a young teenager in its bloody military hospitals. In 1865 at the age of 18, he was graduated from Georgetown in medicine.

Believing himself too young to practice, Howard enrolled at the University of Virginia to do post-graduate work in chemistry. There he roomed with James Benjamin Sclater Jr. and was in the first meeting of Pi Kappa Alpha. After Virginia, he returned to Georgetown to teach. Later, he studied law at Georgetown and practiced law – first in Baltimore, Maryland, then in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Julian Edward Wood was born in Currituck County, North Carolina. His father was a physician and moved the family to Hickory Groves, Virginia. When the Civil War began, Wood enlisted and served for about one year before his father insisted he complete his education. Thus in 1862, he enrolled in Virginia Military Institute. After the war, he enrolled in medical studies. He had been a VMI friend of Sclater and also knew Tazewell. After leaving Virginia in the spring of l868, he completed his degree at the Baltimore Medical College in 1869 and settled in Elizabeth City, North Carolina.

Sclater (pronounced “slaughter”) was born in Orange County, Virginia, and was raised in Richmond. In March 1864, he entered Virginia Military Institute, and as a cadet, he saw military service in the defense of Richmond.

At the University of Virginia, he studied medicine and roomed two doors from Taylor in 43 West Range with Robertson Howard, another Founder. After brief employment in the drug industry in Charlotte, North Carolina, he returned to Richmond and worked in his father’s business. The youngest of the Founders to die, he never married.

Taylor spent his formative years in Williamsburg, Virginia, where his father was bursar of the College of William and Mary, from which Taylor received an A.B. in 1867. He entered the University of Virginia in 1867, living at 47 West Range. There, he studied law, a profession he never practiced.

After college, he went to Norfolk, Virginia. Amassing a small fortune in the real estate business, he served in the Common Council of Norfolk and represented Norfolk in the state legislature. Taylor was the originator of Pi Kappa Alpha. He gave the Fraternity its name, probably authored the earliest ritual and presided over the first convention in 1874.

Born William Bradford, he changed his name with permission of the Virginia legislature to preserve the memory of his grandfather, a beloved governor of Virginia. He became a cadet at the Virginia Military Institute, which had moved to Richmond. When Richmond, the capital of the Confederate States of America, fell to the United States Army, the VMI cadets were directed to escape as best they could. Tazewell escaped by water and took refuge with relatives further up the James River.

After the Civil War, he went to the University of Virginia to study medicine and roomed with Taylor, his cousin, in 47 West Range. Like Taylor, he went into business in Norfolk and was prominent in Norfolk public life. He served for 20 years in the Norfolk City Council. He died one day shy of 70 and was buried in Elmwood Cemetery, near the grave of his cousin and chief Founder, Frederick Southgate Taylor.

Alexander was the son of James Wadell Alexander, one of the great theologians of the first half of the 19th century. His father died in 1859, and Alexander and his mother spent the Civil War years in Great Britain.

After the War, Alexander enrolled in the University of Virginia and lived there with his uncle on his mother’s side, Dr. James L. Cabell, a professor of medicine. The fact that Tazewell, Sclater and Howard were all in the medical studies probably drew Alexander into the Fraternity’s circle.

After leaving the University, Alexander became an executive in the Equitable Life Assurance Society where he worked for more than 65 years.