Individual Details

Excerpt from:

History of the Scotch Ridge Presbyterian Church, originally written and read October 25, 1919 by S. A. C. Pickens, being the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Church and revised by Elmer E. Pickens to be read by John M. Pickens, August 23,1929, being the Sixtieth Anniversary of the Church.

The history of the Scotch Ridge Presbyterian Church and the history of the Cemetery are so closely interwoven that they are very hard to separate. Consequently what we have written will relate to both Church and Cemetery, and is from tradition, Church and Cemetery records and from personal recollection.

One of the earliest settlements in Belmont County was made on this high land in Pease Township now known as Scotch Ridge. The Alexanders, Mitchells, Clarks and Pickens located here near the close of the seventeenth [eighteenth] century. They came from York County, Pa., to Ohio, but were originally from Scotland. Hence the settlement was named Scotch Ridge. The Cemetery was laid out at a very early day on this high point of land from which a magnificent view is obtained of the surrounding country. In this the fathers and mothers sleep, and their places are marked by many beautiful and costly monuments.

Religious meetings were frequently held on this spot before the trees of the forest were felled by the woodman's ax, and one [worshipper], Mrs. Margaret Alexander was accustomed to sit under the shade of one particular Maple and requested that at her death she be laid to rest under its friendly branches. Her request later was carried out and her body was laid away 120 years since, it being the first mound to mark the site of the present Cemetery. Eight years later, her husband, James Alexander, was laid by her side, and the two flat stones just outside mark their resting place. And all of us who claim the Alexander blood can be traced back to the two pioneers just mentioned.

Marriage	18 Dec 1757	Campbeltown, Argyllshire, Scotland - James Alexander
Death	Bef 1767	Scotland

Spouse	James Alexander (1733 - 1817)
Child	James Alexander (1762 - 1852)
Child	Andrew Alexander ( - 1846)