Alexander Mitchell (Scottish entrepreneur)

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Alexander Mitchell (August 20, 1871 – December 4, 1934) was a Scottish entrepreneur. He was born in Devon, Clackmannanshire, the second son of Alexander Mitchell and Emma Pearce and a grandson of William Mitchell (Scottish entrepreneur). He married Meta Mary Graham Paton in March 3 1894. They had two children including Harold Paton Mitchell.

He was educated at Harrow and Oxford. He had quite a military career with the Territorial Army serving with a number of mounted units starting with the Oxford University Mounted Infantry and then the Fife Light Horse Volunteers prior to becoming a Lieutenant-Colonel. He commanded the Fife and Forfar Yeomanry in 1914. He was wounded at Gallipoli a year later. The unit was subsequently converted to infantry as a battalion of the Black Watch sent to France in 1917. Alexander finished the war as Town Commandant of Duren in Germany after the Armistice.

He inherited his father’s business interests. He held a number of company directorships included ones with the Ben Line Steamers (from 1911), the Alloa Coal Company (from 1898), the Alloa Glass Works Company (from 1908) and the Shotts Iron Company (from 1923). He was possibly the chairman of the Chapel Coal Company liquidated by his cousin Robert Schaw Miller in 1922. When he died in 1934 his estate was valued at £389,913.

He invested in the Scottish syndicate, which led the financing for a mine known as Mountain Park. The Mountain Park mine was officially opened in 1911, and then in 1921, the Luscar mine was opened. The sole purpose of these mines was to provide fuel for the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway as it expanded westward. The Canadian mines form the nucleus of what was later Andalex Resources

He owed a number of properties including a house at Monksford St. Boswell in Roxburghshire, purchased by 1901), ands at Luscar and Carnock in Fifeshire inherited from his father and Tulliallan Castle also in Fifeshire in 1923 . He was Joint Master of the Lauderdale Hunt (Roxburghshire) from 1910 and the President of the Fife Hunt in 1913. The Scotsman newspaper in 1896 reported that he was a very successful breeder of horses, sheep and cattle winning prizes in a number of southern Scottish agricultural shows. He was a member of Clackmannan Union Agricultural Society. He was appointed a trustee of the Dunfermline and West Fife Hospital in 1924. He was a Justice of the Peace for Fifeshire.