Alexander Vignon, one of six siblings who entered religious life, was born in Valognes, France. At age twenty-eight, he entered the novitiate at Caen, France and the following year taught “Petite Classes” in the same town for a few months until he was sent for instruction to the agricultural school of Beauvais. There he acquired a practical knowledge of gardening, landscaping, and tree-raising. In 1864, Brother Facile, Assistant, brought Brother Azaire to America. Arriving in October that year in New York, his first assignment was as the Orphanage in Albany as a horticulturist where he stayed until 1867 when he was sent to Christian Brothers College in Pass Christian, Mississippi. There he made the place a showcase of landscaping beauty. In 1872 he was assigned to the New York Novitiate where he prepared the land for cultivation and where he beautified the grounds through his landscaping skills. It became one of the “showplaces of Westchester.” In order “to obtain for him a more amenable climate”, he was sent to the Martinez Novitiate in California in 1894. Within three years the property was beautifully landscaped. He died there in 1897 at the age of 69 and was buried in the Mount Hope Novitiate Cemetery. His remains were later removed to the new cemetery at Mount La Salle in Napa County, where he was the first Brother to be buried in that cemetery (June 28, 1933). He had been a De La Salle Christian Brother for thirty-one years.
