Alexander Peterkin
Alexander's education, begun at the parish school, was completed in Edinburgh, and he closed his university curriculum as a law student in 1803.In this year he was enrolled in the first regiment of Royal Edinburgh volunteers, feeling with Walter Scott and others that the time needed a strong civilian army.[2] After a full training in the office of a Writer to the Signet, Peterkin was duly qualified as a solicitor before the supreme courts (S. S. C.), and he began his professional career at Peterhead before 1811 as "attorney, notary public, and conveyancer".[2] A lover of literature for its own sake, Peterkin numbered among his friends Walter Scott, Alexander Jeffrey, John Wilson, and the leading contemporary men of letters in Edinburgh.His writings on Orkney and Shetland may be consulted with advantage, and his learned and systematic Booke of the Universall Kirk has a distinctly authoritative value.