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James Alexander, Surveyor-General of New Jersey, was born in Scotland in 1691.  He served as an officer of engineers during the attempt to sustain the Stuart King in 1715, which led to his flight to America after the fall of the Stuart monarchy.

He arrived in New York and within a year was made Secretary of the Province.  While in that office he studied law and was soon thereafter made Attorney-General. One historian says of him: "His profound legal knowledge, sagacity and penetration caused him to be consulted on the most important questions, and his replies were received as the answer of an oracle."

He was made Surveyor-General of New Jersey in March, 1717, also Receiver of Quit Rents of East Jersey, and Advocate-General. While Burnet was Governor of the then united provinces of New York and New Jersey, Alexander was made a member of the Provincial Council.  By that time, Alexander had already amassed some land in America; as member of the council he was expected to have at least one thousand acres and as Surveyor-General he had the opportunity of seeing how valuable some of the wildest parts of the new country might prove in time.

Alexander participated in the survey of the northern boundary line of New Jersey, which was ordered to be made in 1719.  Alexander writes of the incidents and tells of the observations taken, as if under his personal supervision.. How large his tract or where it lay we cannot now tell, but the name of his wife, Mary Alexander, is found on some of the oldest deeds of land in the vicinity of Hamburgh ; and his son, William Alexander, sold some of the most valuable mineral tracts in the county when he was trying to obtain the title of Lord Stirling. The name of William Alexander is also found on early deeds for the ground where Morristown now stands.

Upon the death of Governor Montgomery, Colonel Cosby was sent over to fill his place and there was serious trouble during the whole time of his administration.  Governor Cosby's first official act was to demand for himself one half the fees already paid his predecessor, Rip VanDam, an act which Lewis Morris and James Alexander opposed.   Cosby, losing his case in the court, suspended Alexander from the Council, and displaced Chief Justice Morris, who had held the office for twenty years.  Both parties appealed to England, and the letters are full of personal abuse.
In a letter to England, written by Governor Cosby in 1735, he sums up Alexander's evil deeds by saying: "This man, James Alexander, has openly appeared as counsel for that treasonable printer whose seditious libels have been ordered to be burnt."  This was a reference to Alexander's role in the famous trial of John Peter Zenger. It was Alexander who had retained Alexander Hamilton to defend Zenger in on of the most important Free Speech trials in Colonial American history.

Governor Cosby died in 1736 ; two years later Chief Justice Morris was made Governor of New Jersey, which then became a separate State, and Alexander was restored to his place in the Council.

One of the last public letters of Surveyor-General Alexander was about the still unsettled boundary line between New York and New Jersey. At this time matters had grown very serious, and the property owners were in danger of personal violence. Mr. Alexander speaks strongly against the attempt on the part of New York to fix the line far below the mark decided upon in early deeds and surveys.