Alexander or "Sander" to the Dutch was born in Dysart on the Fifeshire coast, just north of Kirkcaldy, Scotland. He called his estate in America, Nova Scotia which became today's Scotia and Glenville is also named for him. His story is of interest as quoted from Hudson-Mohawk Family Memoirs: "It was during his son's lifetime that the ancient Glen-Sanders mansion, which became the Sanders homestead for six generations, was built. It was erected when Major John Alexander Glen was about fifty five years old, in 1713. This house replaced the older, almost upon or near the same site and of the self-same material, but half a century later. It is, in 1910, in admirable condition throughout, and attracts visitors daily to it despite the fact that it is at least a mile from the city of Schenectady. The original mansion was built about 1659 by Alexander Lindsey Glen, founder of that family in America, who was one of the original "Fifteen Proprietors" of Schenectady. He was born about 1605, south of Inverness, Scotland, and when he crossed to Holland because of religious persecution, the Dutchmen called him Sander Leendertse. He was a partisan in the days of Charles I, and had to flee to Holland to protect himself, where he was warmly received. He later emigrated with his wife, Catherine Dongan (Catalyn Doncassen), and the early Dutch settlers to New Netherland. He was a man of liberal education, which he received in Scotland, and possessed a large fortune; was typical in physique and temperament of his native heath, and was known as a strong man. He was the agent of the Dutch West India Company at Fort Nassau on the Delaware river, in 1643, and in 1646 was granted land at Graves End on Long Island. In 1658 he removed to Schenectady, where he commenced building his stone mansion.
This was the first house built upon the north bank of the Mohawk river for the entire one hundred and thirty-five miles of its length. It was constructed close to the water's edge and against the side of a steep slope leading to the broad, sandy plateau on which the village of Scotia stands. It was located about three-quarters of a mile west of the old Glenville bridge leading across the Mohawk to Schenectady. Herein for generations were deposited important colonial documents. It stood about one hundred feet south of the present Sanders edifice, and had to be taken down because each spring the high water was an inconvenience and a serious menace, so in 1713 much of the same material was used in the construction of the one now occupied by the Sanders family, and the inroads of the river have obliterated even the outline of where stood the foundations, filling the same in with silt. Between the two sites was the place where the Indians enjoyed burning their white victims at the stake. On the flats to the east the savages grew their corn, as set forth in the title as their "cornfield." He named the place Scotia in memory of the land of his birth. The title was from the Mohawk Indians from 1658 to 1665, and then he obtained a patent from the crown. He was a religious man, and finding it irksome to drive the seventeen miles to Albany every Sabbath morn, in 1682 built the Dutch Church which was also used as the town hall. Mr. Glen also owned a town lot in Schenectady with two hundred feet frontage on Washington avenue, the residence thereon occupied by his descendants until burned in 1819. He died in 1685, and was buried under the church beside his wife, who had died the previous year.
The reason why the house was neither attacked nor burned during the great massacre of 1690 is interesting. It was Major John Alexander Glen, son of the former, who built the present mansion in 1713, and who was alive at the time of the massacre. The Glens were very friendly with the Indians, and helped rescue a white captive from the savages. One day a party of Mohawks brought to the original house a Jesuit priest who had come down from Canada, where were the French, intending to have him locked up by Major Glen until the following day, when they proposed to torture him before taking his life. Glen pretended to fear the magical powers of the priest, and having two keys to his cellar door told the Indians that they might lock the priest in there, and on handing one key to the redskins remarked that he would have nothing to do with the matter, for he did not believe a key would hold a priest confined so long as there was a keyhole through which he was doubtless able to send his spirit and body likewise. Early the next morning, Major Glen placed the priest in a cask and despatched it in his cart for Albany. This act had its important bearing. It gratified the French of Canada, so when Schenectady was attacked on the bitterly cold night of February 8, 1690, by the French and their savage allies under Seignior Le Moyne de Sainte Helene, it was ordered that no harm be done to the house of the Glens or to any relative. Glen undertook to persuade the Indians that he had many relatives in Schenectady, whom he wished spared; but the number increased so extensively that he had to desist or the Redmen, perceiving the ruse, would spare none, as they began to have doubts. In this massacre, now a feature in colonial history, about eighty houses were burned to the ground and some three hundred souls were slain".