Oliver Anderson

Oliver Anderson was born Feb. 15, 1794, in Nicholasville, Ky. He was born into a wealthy and business-minded family, and by the age of 16 or 17, had already established an extensive trade with New Orleans by means of flat boats, returning to Kentucky on foot.

Not long after, Anderson enlisted in the War of 1812, serving in Patrick Gray's Company of Kentucky Volunteers. Anderson quickly moved through the ranks, becoming a lieutenant in 1813, a captain in 1815, a major in 1819, and finally a lieutenant colonel in 1820. Following the war, Anderson returned to Kentucky, resuming his trade and serving briefly as a sheriff's deputy.

In 1819, Anderson married Mary Campbell. The couple had ten children together: Mary Ann, Catherine, Minerva, William, Joseph Caldwell, Jane Le Grand, Robert Oliver, John Campbell, Katherine Blair, and Leila. Catherine died in infancy. Mary Campbell died in 1842. Anderson remarried five years later to Louisa Price.

Anderson entered into the hemp production business in 1830. In addition to raising the hemp, he also manufactured rope and bagging from it. He soon became associated with textile producer Samuel G. Jackson and formed the firm of Anderson & Jackson. The company thrived for several years, until political instability in Europe lessened foreign demand for hemp and forced the firm to dissolve. Anderson, however, remained in the hemp business. In 1850, his farm produced 60 bushels of hemp seed and over 20 tons of hemp.

It was about this time that Anderson made the decision to move his family to Lexington, Mo. He purchased a 67-acre tract of land along the Missouri River and moved northward with sons William and Joseph. Both sons were lawyers and began to practice in Missouri immediately. Oliver Anderson made plans to continue in the hemp business with his son-in-law, Howard Gratz.

Gratz was the son of a wealthy Kentucky hemp producer and had married Minerva Anderson in 1847. After moving to Missouri, Gratz founded the firm of Gratz & Shelby with his stepbrother Joseph O. Shelby, who would later become a well-known Confederate general. Together, Gratz & Shelby owned a ropewalk in Waverly, Mo., a sawmill in Berlin and a large 700-acre estate in Lafayette County.

Anderson had finished construction on his ropewalk in 1853, also building himself a residence on the bluff overlooking it. In April of that year, Anderson shipped over 1,700 coils of hemp to St. Louis, the largest shipment ever received there in one day. By 1854, Anderson & Gratz was the largest manufacturer in Lexington, nearly doubling the output of competing factories.

In 1856, Gratz left Missouri to return to Lexington, Ky. It appears that his partnership with Shelby was suffering due to Shelby's active participation in the rising conflict between Missouri slave-owners and Kansas abolitionists. He did not, however, dissolve partnerships with Anderson or Shelby at that time, and merely stepped down from active participation.

In the fall of 1861, the war came into Anderson's home. The Union army, which had occupied the Masonic College in Lexington and surrounded it with defenses, now claimed Anderson's house for use as a field hospital. It is believed that Anderson and his family were evicted by the army during this period and stayed with friends and family during the fighting. After the Union troops left town, evidence suggests that Anderson returned to his house, if only briefly.

In the summer of 1862, Anderson's secessionist beliefs and poor financial condition would spell doom for him as the Union Army took Missouri into a state of martial law. Anderson was arrested in July and taken to Gratiot Street prison in St. Louis. The exact reason for his arrest is not known, but rumor had it that he was a member of a secret militant group called the Southern League, which was stealing and smuggling arms for the Confederacy. A Lexington resident also noted in his diary that Anderson was jailed for being unable to pay the usual bond required by the military.

Anderson would spend less than a year at Gratiot Street, as he still had influential friends in Washington. He was paroled, but forced to live in the Northern states for the duration of the war. Soon the terms were softened, though, and after several months of moving from place to place, Anderson returned to Kentucky. He died in 1873 at Gratz's residence in Lexington, Ky. The Kentucky Gazette published this obituary:

In this city, on the 20th of January, Col. OLIVER ANDERSON, in the 79th year of his age.

Col. Anderson was a native of Jessamine County, where he principally resided until he was near sixty years of age, and where he was well-known and highly esteemed as a man of probity, and recognized as possess of those qualities which give a man influence with the better class [sic] of his fellow citizens. He entered the army which marched from Kentucky in 1813 to the relief of the northwestern frontier, and was present at several battles that distinguished those campaigns, and was wounded and taken prisoner at River Raisin. This consumed the years that should have been devoted to acquiring a collegiate education, such as his brothers had attained, and yet no one ever supplied this deficiency more thoroughly by subsequent study and reading. We doubt if any unprofessional man ever had a more accurate knowledge of Shakespeare and the elder dramatists, and gave more of an otherwise busy life to the reading of history and current literature, and profited more by the reading. He was benevolent, honorable and brave, and, without being austere, he was profoundly religious in his convictions and his life. He represented the county of Fayette in the Senate of Kentucky at one time, and attacked the mismanagement of certain departments of the government with a vigor and courage that gained him the approbation of all good citizens. While not cordial or warm in general intercourse, yet he was gentle and kind in his family, and was rewarded by the utmost affection and respect of his children and grandchildren, which, in the decline of life, is far more to be prized than wealth or honors. We have the very best reason for knowing that he was a man of a strong and robust nature, of an integrity that could not be tempted to do a mean or dishonorable action and of a charitable, kind and forgiving disposition. He passed away at peace with all men, and there were no hands in his death.