Alexander Arthur, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Alexander Arthur

Scottish-born engineer/entrepreneur

Date of Birth: 30-Aug-1846

Place of Birth: Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom

Date of Death: 04-Mar-1912

Profession: businessperson, engineer, entrepreneur

Zodiac Sign: Virgo


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About Alexander Arthur

  • Alexander Alan Arthur (August 30, 1846 – March 4, 1912) was a Scottish-born engineer and entrepreneur active primarily in the southeastern United States in the latter half of the 19th century.
  • Flamboyant, charismatic, and energetic, Arthur used his prominent American and European financial connections to fund numerous business ventures, most of which were overly ambitious and ultimately failed.
  • A proponent of economic advancement in what became known as the New South, Arthur played a primary role in the development of the Cumberland Gap area, and in the course of his endeavors established the cities of Middlesboro, Kentucky and Harrogate, Tennessee.
  • The community of Arthur, Tennessee, is named for him.After spending his early life migrating back and forth between Scotland, Canada, and Scandinavia, Arthur moved to Boston in 1879, and accepted a position as the general manager of the Scottish-Carolina Timber and Land Company's American operations.
  • In the early 1880s, Arthur identified a rich stand of timber in the upper Blue Ridge Mountains along the Tennessee-North Carolina border, and devised a boom system to extract the timber from the difficult mountain terrain.
  • Later in the same decade, Arthur identified the abundant iron ore deposits in the Cumberland Gap region, and established a multimillion-dollar iron production operation in hopes of making Middlesboro the "Pittsburgh of the South."While he never experienced great financial success, Arthur's endeavors were a harbinger of the great logging and mining operations that became major economic forces in Southern Appalachia in the early 20th century.

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