James Alexander (d. 1756) (10)

Elected to the original American Philosophical Society.

James Alexander (27 May 1691–2 April 1756) was a lawyer, politician, and controversialist known for his role in the Zenger trial, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1744. Born in Scotland, he received training in engineering, surveying, and astronomy and may have participated in the Jacobite uprising there before immigrating to Perth Amboy, New Jersey, in 1715. Soon after, he became Surveyor General of East Jersey, West Jersey, and New York, serving on the committees that surveyed New York’s borders with New Jersey and Connecticut. During this time he also acquired extensive land holdings, becoming one of the wealthiest men in the region. From 1720 on he practiced law, becoming Attorney General of New Jersey in 1723, and sat on the royal councils of both New York and New Jersey. In 1733, Alexander and others hired John Peter Zenger to print scathing attacks on New York Governor William Cosby in the New York Weekly Journal. When Zenger was prosecuted for seditious libel, Alexander and APS member William Smith served as his attorneys and, following their disbarment by Chief Justice and APS member James De Lancey, assisted with the defense behind the scenes. Alexander also corresponded with the Royal Society of London and Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris and published a letter to Benjamin Franklin concerning the impending Transit of Mercury in the APS Transactions. He was also a founder of King’s College and the New York Library Society. (PI, ANB, DNB, DAB)