Born in Lanarkshire, Scotland, to Barbara Bell and John McAlpine, David came over to Lonaconing to work the Georges Creek coal mines.

He married his English immigrant wife, Emily Blanche Smith, about 1885, and by 1895 they had five children: Elsie Bell (McAlpine) Carpenter, Alice B.(McAlpine) Hardegen, Allen, Mable Edith (McAlpine) Duckworth, and Hila Madaris McAlpine, who married twice: first to Robert C. Zimmerman, second to Oliver Dyer Collett.

According to the Genealogical Society of Allegany County's "Allegany County Maryland Rural Cemeteries," his grave marker in Old Coney Cemetery says "Co. B 1st Md. Inf. Span. Am. War," but his headstone and the roster of the 1st Maryland Infantry lists him as a private in Company D.

The troops moved several times between mustering at Belair Md. in May 1898 and disbanding at Camp Mackenzie near Augusta Georgia in February 1899.

David McAlpine died just a month after the troops at Camp Mackenzie disbanded.

His death notice in the Cumberland Evening Times makes no mention of his Army service, saying only that he was formerly a janitor at the county courthouse, and that he was "a great sufferer from nervous prostration for the past four years."

His death certificate says that he died from convulsions resulting from "locomotor ataxia," also known as tabes dorsalis, a painful, degenerative, neuromuscular wasting disease.

Born in Lanarkshire, Scotland, to Barbara Bell and John McAlpine, David came over to Lonaconing to work the Georges Creek coal mines.

He married his English immigrant wife, Emily Blanche Smith, about 1885, and by 1895 they had five children: Elsie Bell (McAlpine) Carpenter, Alice B.(McAlpine) Hardegen, Allen, Mable Edith (McAlpine) Duckworth, and Hila Madaris McAlpine, who married twice: first to Robert C. Zimmerman, second to Oliver Dyer Collett.

According to the Genealogical Society of Allegany County's "Allegany County Maryland Rural Cemeteries," his grave marker in Old Coney Cemetery says "Co. B 1st Md. Inf. Span. Am. War," but his headstone and the roster of the 1st Maryland Infantry lists him as a private in Company D.

The troops moved several times between mustering at Belair Md. in May 1898 and disbanding at Camp Mackenzie near Augusta Georgia in February 1899.

David McAlpine died just a month after the troops at Camp Mackenzie disbanded.

His death notice in the Cumberland Evening Times makes no mention of his Army service, saying only that he was formerly a janitor at the county courthouse, and that he was "a great sufferer from nervous prostration for the past four years."

His death certificate says that he died from convulsions resulting from "locomotor ataxia," also known as tabes dorsalis, a painful, degenerative, neuromuscular wasting disease.