Background
Archibald Alexander was born on April 17, 1772 at South River, Rockbridge County, Virginia, United States. He was named for his grandfather, Archibald Alexander, a well-educated Ulster Scot, who about 1736 migrated from County Derry in Ireland to Pennsylvania, and after some years moved south and organized a settlement of his fellow countrymen near Lexington, in the present county of Rockbridge, Virginia, United States. There his son William, a merchant and farmer, and an influential elder of the Presbyterian Church, married Ann Reid, the daughter of a prosperous landholder of the same community. Archibald was the third of the nine children of this union. The Alexanders were noted for their love of liberty, their intellectual vigor and ambition, and their devotion to evangelical religion.