Russell Alexander Alger was born on February 27, 1836, in Lafayette Township, Medina County, Ohio.

[4] His parents died in 1848, leaving Russell the oldest of three orphan children, without money and with a brother and sister to care for and support.

[2] He had been accustomed to working for the neighbors for a small quantity of provisions or a few pennies a day even before the death of his parents, who were very poor.

[2] He now found homes for his brother and sister and secured work for himself on a farm, his remuneration being his board, clothes and the privilege of attending school three months out of the year.

His holdings included a great pine forest on Lake Huron covering over 100 square miles (260 km2) and producing more than 75,000,000 board feet (180,000 m3) of lumber per annum.

[15] In the late 1860s, Alger was a leader of the Boys in Blue, an organization of Union veterans formed to support Republican Party policies and candidates.

[16] In October 1872, Alger was a vice president of the committee that organized a Republican campaign event which featured a speech by James G. Blaine, then serving as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.

[17] In June 1876, Alger was a vice president of the committee which sponsored a Republican rally in Detroit that began that year's presidential campaign.

[18] In early October 1876, Alger was a vice president of the committee that organized a mass Republican rally in Detroit which featured a speech by former governor Edward Follansbee Noyes of Ohio.

[19] In late October 1876, he was one of the vice presidents of the committee that organized a Republican rally in Detroit which included a keynote address by U.S.

[20] In early June 1880, Alger was a delegate to a mass interstate meeting of Union veterans which met in Chicago to devise a plan for supporting Republican candidates in that year's elections.

[24] "Algerism" became an epithet to describe the claimed incompetence of the Army, especially as compared to the more stellar performance of the Navy.

[27] Historians and authors have concluded that it is more probable that the official preventing Mosby from receiving an appointment under McKinley was Secretary of State John Sherman.

[28] When Mosby began serving in Hong Kong, he concluded that his predecessor, David H. Bailey, had been involved in embezzlement and fraud.

[28] On September 27, 1902, Alger was appointed by Michigan Governor Aaron T. Bliss to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the death of James McMillan.

[30] Alger was the founder of a prominent family, many of whom became involved in 20th century Michigan politics and active in the Republican Party.

Frederick graduated from Harvard in 1899, served as a lieutenant colonel with the American Expeditionary Force in France during the First World War, and was awarded the French Legion of Honor.

In a memorial address, Senator John Spooner of Wisconsin said of Alger, "No man without noble purpose, well-justified ambitions, strong fiber, and splendid qualities in abundance could have carved out and left behind him such a career.

[34] In May 1898, the War Department established Camp Russell A. Alger on a farm near Falls Church and Dunn Loring, Virginia.

In 1921, a memorial fountain was dedicated to Alger in Grand Circus Park, Detroit by sculptor Daniel Chester French and architect Henry Bacon.