Alexander Seath was born in Kinghorn on the 1st of November 1829, 'natural' child of John Seath and Mary Lessels.  Despite this inauspicious start he was to become one of the foremost buisnessmen in Dunfermline.

 

  After moving to Dunfermline he married Magdalene Berrie on the 27th December 1861.  Their daughter Catherine Wilson Mathie Seath was born at the family home in 5 Chalmers Street, Dunfermline almost exactly a year later.  This was their only child as, on the 21st November 1864 Magdalene died of struma (hyperthyroidism).

 

  Left with a young daughter it wasn't until the 7th May 1868 that he married his second wife Agnes Aikman Laing Brakenrig.  Alexander and Agnes had 6 of a family, four of whom attained majority.

 

 

Catherine was brought up along witht her half brothers and sisters as part of the family until her marriage to Hugh Henderson in 1899 in the family home.

 

 

 "On leaving school he was apprenticed to Mr Dron, chemist, Kirkcaldy.  He applied himself with zeal to the study of chemistry while under Mr Dron and at a comparitively early age was enroled a member of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. 

  In 1853 he aquired the business carried on by Messrs Macara Brothers in Bridge Street, Dunfermline, and he them founded what turned out to be one of the most successful provincial drug dispensary businesses in the country.

  The business of chemist in necessarily an exacting one - the dispenser must be at the call of his patrons any hour during the day or the night - but no one ever heard Mr Seath grumble at the demands made upon him.

  He closed his business career in the city as he began.  Before he had been a month in the Burgh he had earned the compliment of being painstaking, methodical, and extremely careful in the important work of dispensing, and these grand features were ever present in all his work up to the last day he stood behind the counter.

  To all these good qualities Mr Seath added a pleasant and agreeable manner.  Rich and poor alike were served with a courtesy and pleasantness which were refreshing even to the severely practical business mind and many old people who have frequented his shop during the past 40 years will find it a difficult task to persuade themselves into the idea that they will hear his pleasant and sympathetic voice no more, that they have taken the last glimpse of of his gentlemanly bearing and must content themselves with only the reminiscences of his refined and gentle manner.

  On the death of Mr Gavin Steel, Mr Seath became the local sevretary for the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, and this position he held until the day of his death.  Feeling it to be the duty of every citizen who could possibly share the time to take a share in Local Government matters, Mr Seath entered the Town Council as a representative of the First Ward in 1872.  In 1879 he was called upon to fill the position of treasurer of the burgh, and a year later he was elected to the post of junior Baillie.

  He filled the position of a Magistrate of the city until 1887, when he bid good-bye to the Council, and began to court the leisure he though he had justly earned. 

  The great Devon water scheme, the new town buildings, adn the Dunfermline-Charlestown sewage works were carried through during Mr Seath's 16 years' labour in the Council, and all these schemes of progress had his unflinching support.

  Sanitary matters were his stong point, and all the time he occupied a seat on the Council Boardhe proved an invaluable member of the Sanitary