Alexander James Mitchell (October 1846 – 1926) was a British born surveyor, mining engineer and businessman who played a critical role in the development of Darwin and the completion of the Australian Overland Telegraph Line in 1872.
[6] He was charged with bigamy by the NSW Police and was described as "31 years of age, 5 feet 10 inches high, slender build, fair complexion, brown hair, brown beard, whiskers, and a moustache tinged with red, blue eyes, one front tooth artificial; an Englishman; a surveyor.
In March 1882, Mitchell married his third wife, Charlotte Jane Whiteman, daughter of a local Judge, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
He and Charlotte later moved to Los Angeles, and by 1910 had two servants - a Japanese cooked named Shigitashi Suzuki and a Louisiana-born housemaid, Harriet S. Johnson.
Stretching from Adelaide in the far south to the newly established town of Port Darwin in the far north, it was the longest such system to be built anywhere in the world.
[19][20][21] R. C. Patterson, who was in charge of completing the final section of the OTL, recruited Mitchell as an overseer and surveyor.
[22] Mitchell reflected on his work on the OTL in a letter to the editor in December 1872, where he describes himself as the Chief Officer of the Central Section of the Line.
A. G. Little, and Patterson, he is photographed leaning against a supply wagon in a work camp just near Frew Ponds where the line was connected in August 1872.
[24] In February 1876, he was appointed a licensed surveyor in New South Wales and began to advertise his services in the local newspapers.
[27] In the late 1870s, Mitchell moved to the United States and secured work, first as a surveyor, then as a mining engineer in Colorado and Arizona.