Alexa Stirling

A L E X A S T I R L I NG | I V

Her biographer, James Barclay, answered the first two questions: She was the second of three daughters of Dr. Alexander Williamson Stirling from Peebles, Scotland and Opera singer Nora Bromley of Yorkshire, England. Nora had been born in Bellevue House at the village of Goole, which stood on large grounds. Her father had a flourishing wine importing business. Alexa’s mother had a fine voice and was offered a role in Gilbert and Sullivan’s, ‘The Gondoliers.’ If she had accepted, she would have toured America with the D’Oyley Carte Company. Dr. Stirling’s specialty was eye, ear, nose and throat. While working as an eye surgeon at the Royal Westminster Ophthalmic Hospital in London, his studies took him to the University of Berlin and an eye clinic in Paris. To finance these continued studies, he became a ship’s doctor for short periods, traveling as far as Buenos Aires. On a trip to the United States, he took the time to visit New York, Chicago, and Denver, with a mind to settling in North America. For by now, he had met his future wife and was determined to settle somewhere. He left England for New York in 1893 and spent two years there working as a lecturer at the New York Post Graduate College. They had planned to leave there for Chicago but changed their minds at the last moment and went to Atlanta (Barclay 2001). In 2016, Alexa’s daughter Sandra discovered the reason Atlanta won out. She found the answer in a history of their family written by Janet, her older sister: After deciding to leave New York, Daddy planned to go to Chicago and had all the household goods shipped there, but some information caused him to consider Atlanta. He made the trip and stayed in the Aragon Hotel. On New Year’s Day 1895, the sun was shining, the windows were open, and the Cotton States Exposition was in progress. He went back to New York, got Mother and me, and had all the stuff shipped to Atlanta from Chicago. Two years later, Alexa was born in a house on Piedmont Avenue between Sixth and Seventh Streets. James Barclay: Dr. Stirling established his medical and surgical practice in the city, where he was also the British correspondent — a post described as nearly identical with consul. The parents of Alexa and Bobby would have referred to themselves as middle class, but both were well educated, successful, and descended from stable families in Britain and Georgia. In the rough-and-tumble railroad town of Atlanta, they were definitely upper class. The Jones family (1907) and Alexa’s (1908) came to East Lake close to the same time for the same reasons. Both children were small and sickly so their parents had them homeschooled to avoid exposing them to the common infections in every school. The moves worked out well. East Lake was healthier than town, and with golf, tennis, and swimming, it was more fun. There is no evidence that Alexander and Nora intended to raise a golf champion when they moved to East Lake, but if they had, they picked the perfect place and exactly the right moment. In 1898, three years after they arrived in Atlanta, the Atlanta Athletic Club was founded. Six years later the new club bought land for a golf course at East Lake. The Stirlings bought a lot across from the main entrance in 1908, the year the course opened, and moved in two years later. Alexa wrote, I was introduced to golf by my father when I was eleven. She described Bobby in 1909:

17