William James Anderson

He was the youngest of the six Anderson children — born 9 February 1875 in Washington, Pennsylvania, the same Washington County where his father Rev. Abraham preached and where most of his older siblings had been born. By the time of his birth his eldest sister Anna Janett was almost 13 and his eldest brother John Wallace was 10; the youngest-by-a-margin position would have shaped his upbringing — the manse’s last child, growing up while the older ones left for marriages or schooling or, in the case of his brother John Wallace, a Kansas wedding.

He was nineteen when his father wrote the 21 May 1894 letter — old enough to have his own affairs but not mentioned in the rainy-day news from home. He is the second Anderson brother, opposite to John Wallace’s documented two marriages and twelve-year span of descendants; Dale’s tree (FS ID GMSS-BSG) gives him no marriage record, no children, and no death date.

That absence is open to the same two readings as his sister Mary Belle’s: he died young and unmarried, or his later life is simply not documented in the surviving sources. The Anderson farm at Leeper, Clarion County, where his brother John Wallace would later be buried, may have eventually been William James’s home as well — but the connection is queued.

He is Chuck’s great-great-uncle on the paternal side.

Source: Dale Eesley / FamilySearch — William James Anderson (GMSS-BSG).