LONG YEARS OF HISTORY CONNECTED BY LIFE OF MRS. JOHN REID ANDERSON ************************************************************************ File contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Sandra Allen Fender ************************************************************************ USGENWEB NOTICE: In keeping with our policy of providing free information on the Internet, data may be freely used by non-commercial entities, as long as this message remains on all copied material. These electronic pages cannot be reproduced in any format for profit or other presentation. Return to the NCGenWeb Archives Table of Contents http://www.usgwarchives.net/nc/ncfiles.htm#NC ************************************************************************** Transcribed from a copy of an article that appeared in the Times News, Hendersonville, N.C. in the year 1922. The copy was found in the library of the Henderson County Genealogical Society in Hendersonville, NC. LONG YEARS OF HISTORY CONNECTED BY LIFE OF MRS. JOHN REID ANDERSON On June 1, 1922, died Mrs. John Anderson, who was perhaps the oldest woman in Henderson County. She was born June 20, 1826, thus lacking about 20 days of being 96 years old, in what, was then Buncombe, now Henderson County, N.C. Her maiden name was Margaret Elvira Reid. Of her father she had no recollection, he having, as was supposed, been lost on a boat of which he was captain, plying between Savannah and Augusta on Savannah River. Her mother was of the families of Davidson and Williamson, distinguished in the early colonial history of North Carolina as the founders and first president of Davidson college. She was married in 1842 to John Anderson and was the mother of 12 children, all of whom except one which died in infancy, lived to be more than 30 years old. Her husband died in 1889, there never having been a death in their family during his lifetime. Except that of the infant above referred to. She was a member of the Holly springs Baptist Church and had been for more than half a century at the time of her death. Among her children were three ministers of the gospel, one is a lawyer, two were members of the North Carolina legislature, one in the house, one in the senate, and all were teachers in their young days. Of those children, five are living, the others are dead. The dead are Rev. E. M. Anderson, Rev. J.W. Anderson, Rev. W. L. Anderson, Mrs. B.M. Shipman and Mrs. N.S. Anderson. The living are T.C. Anderson, Mrs. W.S. Trammel, Mrs. V.C.V. Hamilton, H. S. Anderson and Joel M. Anderson. She has living about 70 grandchildren and a number of great-grand children living, so far as can be ascertained in the following States and Countries: North and South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Colorado, Georgia, California, and Washington; British Columbia, Australia, Mexico and Cuba. She had, as far as can be ascertained, between 18 and 20 grandchildren and great grand children in the world war in various capacities, both in the Army and Navy, two of them were wounded, one for a long time supposed to have been killed. It is hard to realize what an important period of time such a long life covered. She might be said to have lived in two ages. The age of slow travel and the age of steam and electricity. At the time of her birth there was not a steam railroad in the world, no telegraph, and of course none of the later inventions that have revolutionized trade, travel and industry. She well remembered the time when deer were plentiful where flourishing towns now stand, where wolves howled at night when Kentucky, Ohio, and Alabama were frontier states, long before the city of Chicago was founded. When she was born Henderson was part of Buncombe County. She remembered well when there was hardly a house where Hendersonville now stands, and the excitement that arose over the location of the County Seat when Henderson County was made a separate county. In 1840 she made what was then a long and adventurous journey across the mountains in a wagon with her step father to Greenville, Tennessee passing through Asheville, which was then a village containing about thirty houses in all. There being a great political gathering when she was in Greenville she saw some of the famous men in the early history of Tennessee and the Republic. She remembered well seeing the great shower of meteors that fell in November 1833, spoken of by old people as the "Time when the stars fell". The log cabin and hard cider campaign of 1840 remained fresh in her memory. She also remembered when Andrew Jackson was President. She was grown, married and had children when the war with Mexico came on. Remembered seeing, and telling good-by to soldiers leaving for that war. She talked with Revolutionary soldiers who served under Washington and Greene, had a vivid impression of those commanders from descriptions of them given by soldiers. She was born fourteen days before the death of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, remembered when Victoria ascended the Throne of Great Britain and many other Historical events that now seem in the remote past. How such a long life connects us with the past. How it brings the reality of old times and old people home to us. Two such lives following each other would cover almost the entire span of our countries history, would go back to the year of 1730, two years before the birth of George Washington, Forty-six years before the Declaration of Independence. long before the seven year war that covered Europe much as the world war has done in our day, long before the French Revolution, the Napolionic wars, the next great convulsion. She retained her health and spirits in a remarkable way to the last. She had few of the infirmities of age, hair retained to the last threads of its raven blackness, Her eyes were still bright, her mind clear and she walked with a lively step. Except for defective hearing she seemed younger than many women of sixty. She was a simple, unostentatious Christian and though she often spoke with sorrow of evil practices and tendencies, she never gossiped or spoke evil of individuals.