Author: Copland, Alexander
Biography:
COPLAND, Alexander (1788-1885: ancestry.co.uk)
The eldest of four children born to Patrick Copland, a professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at Marischal College, and his wife Elizabeth Ogilvie, daughter of a Royal Navy surgeon, he was baptised on 17 July 1788 at the Kirk of St. Nicholas, Aberdeen. Little is known about his childhood and early education but through his father he had access to a circle of eminent natural philosophers and astronomers (Patrick Copland was responsible for establishing Scotland’s first astronomical observatory). In 1803 the family moved to Fountainhall House, Aberdeen. Copland earned his MA from Marischal College in 1807 and was apprenticed to Charles Bannerman, advocate. He was admitted to the Society of Advocates on 30 Nov. 1812. He married Louisa Latifer Norton 26 Apr. 1824; they had a son (d 1827) and a daughter. Louisa died 6 Sept. 1826 and Copland married Anna Anderson on 8 May 1829. They had nine children, of which three were born in Scotland and six in Hinchinbrooke, Huntingdon County, Lower Canada (now Le Haut-Saint-Laurent municipality, Quebec) where the family emigrated in about 1834. Nothing is known about his life in Canada but he built a house in Hinchinbrooke and called it Fountainhall. Both Anna and Alexander died there: Anna on 30 July 1864 and Alexander on 10 Nov. 1885. He was buried in the Huntingdon Protestant Cemetery. His only other publication is Mortal Life; and the State of the Soul After Death (2nd ed. 1834). The U of Michigan copy of Existence of Other Worlds is signed “E: Copland, Fountain Hall”—probably Copland’s mother who died in 1852. (ODNB for Patrick Copland 8 Mar. 2022; ancestry.co.uk 8 Mar. 2022; J. A. Henderson, History of the Society of Advocates in Aberdeen [1912]; New York Herald 5 Aug. 1864) SR