PIKE COUNTY OHIO - BIO: SCOTT, James Alexander (published 1922)
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HISTORY OF OHIO, The American Historical Society, Inc., 1922
Volume V, page 362

        JAMES ALEXANDER SCOTT.  While his duties as chairman of the Board
of State Tax Commissioners give him an official residence at Frankfort,
James Alexander Scott is a Pike County man, long identified with public
affairs there and with interests as a merchant and farmer. He is a business
man of fine judgment and has given deep study to the tax problems of the
state and is one of the best qualified men who have ever held a place on
the Board of State Tax Commissioners.
        Mr. Scott is of old Virginia and more remotely of Scotch ancestry.
His grandfather, Andrew Scott, was born in Scott County, Virginia, and was
a pioneer in Pike County, Kentucky, acquiring extensive lands which he
developed as a farm. He died on his homestead twelve miles north of
Pikeville. He married Peggy McCoy, a native and life long resident of Pike
County. John M. Scott, father of James A., was born on the farm twelve
miles north of Pikeville in 1839, and spent his life in that county, where
for many years he was one of the largest farmers and land owners. At one
time he owned 1,600 acres, and gave his personal supervision to his farming
interests until 1888, when he removed to Pikeville. Thereafter he was in
the mercantile and livery business until his death in 1905. As a republican
he was honored with the office of county treasurer for two terms. He was a
very devout member of the Christian Church. John M. Scott married Minerva
Dixon, who was born in Johnson County, Kentucky, in 1841, and died at
Pikeville in 1900. They had six children: Morrell, who died on a farm in
Pike County at the age of twenty-two; Millard, a merchant who died in Pike
County at the age of twenty-four; Roscoe, a farmer and merchant living on
the old homestead in Pike County; James A.; Floris C., connected with the
Pond Creek Coal Company and a resident of McVeigh; and Dixie who died at
the age of twenty-seven, was the wife of L.H. Lawson, a merchant and farmer
of Pikeville.
        James A. Scott was born on the same farm as his father, twelve
miles north of Pikeville, December 2, 1875. From the age of thirteen he
lived in Pikeville, where he finished his public school education. In 1897
he graduated from the Northern Indiana Normal School at Valparaiso, in the
commercial course, and after that was a merchant at Pikeville for some
years. He still owns a business house in that town and a farm of sixty
acres five miles west, forty acres of this being level river bottom land
and highly productive. He is also interested in the old Scott homestead,
which is still one of the largest farms in Pike County, containing 1,114
acres, and with valuable mineral and timber resources. His legal home is at
Pikeville and he has a modern residence with very extensive grounds in one
of the best residential sections of the town. His home at Frankfort is at
322 Conway Street and his offices are in the New State Capitol.
        Mr. Scott served as sheriff of Pike County from 1906 to 1910, and
from 1910 to 1916 was clerk of the Circuit Court. He was therefore no
stranger to public affairs when he first came to Frankfort to serve as
assistant secretary of state from August 10, 1916 to May 1, 1917. On May
27, 1917, he was appointed a member of the State Tax Commission, and for
the past three years has been chairman of the board.
        Mr. Scott is a director of the Kentucky Rock Asphalt Company of
Louisville and a stockholder in the First National Bank of Pikeville. He
was a worker in the various war campaigns and a contributor of his personal
resources to the Library Bond and other causes. He is a republican in
politics, a past master of Thomas C. Cecil Lodge No. 275, A.F. and A.M., at
Pikeville, a member of Pikeville Chapter No. 133, R.A.M., Indra Consistory
of the Scottish Rite at Covington, is a past grand of Pikeville Lodge No.
294, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, a member of Frankfort Lodge No. 530,
of the Elks, and of the Macabees at Pikeville.
        Mr. Scott married Miss Fannie Reynolds at Pikeville, April 11,
1900. Her parents M.C. and Eliza (Amick) Reynolds, live at Coal Run in Pike
County, where her father is a farmer and also local minister of the
Methodist Church. Mr. and Mrs. Scott have four children; Minerva, born
January 22, 1901; Henry James, born December 30, 1907; William Frank, born
November 16, 1912; and Tola Annette, born August 31, 1918.


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