William Marshall Anderson
William Marshall Anderson (1807 – 1881) was an American scholar, explorer and politician, noted for his detailed travel journals in the Rocky Mountains and Imperial Mexico.
He was born into a large and prominent family, originally from Virginia, that had settled in Kentucky and Ohio after the Revolutionary War. His father had been aide-de-camp to Lafayette at the Battle of Yorktown. His mother was cousin both to Chief Justice John Marshall and to William Clark of the Lewis and Clark expedition. His elder brother Robert Anderson was the Col. Anderson forced to surrender Fort Sumter at the start of the American Civil War. His younger brother Charles Anderson was Governor of Ohio.[1]
In 1834 Marshall, as he was known, took a trip west with a fur-trading party and kept a journal describing his encounters with the explorers and mountain men of the time, including Kit Carson and Jim Bridger[2].
Returning to Ohio he set up a law practice in Chillicothe, married the daughter of former governor Duncan McArthur, ran unsuccessfully for Congress, and with his brother Larz managed legal and financial matters for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. From at least 1839 onwards he was a devout and zealous Catholic.[3]
In the 1865, Anderson journeyed to Mexico, ostensibly on an archeological expedition, in order to help plan the New Virginia Colony, a resettlement venture for ex-Confederates and sympathizers[4]. The Colony was conceived and promoted by Confederate naval engineer and oceanographer Matthew Fontaine Maury, with the support and sponsorship of Emperor Maximilian. As Maximilian's government began to crumble, so did the New Virginia Colony. Weakened with yellow fever, Anderson went to Vera Cruz in 1866 and took a ship back to the USA.[5][6] For his remaining fifteen years he lived mostly in Circleville, Ohio, sometimes traveling on archeological explorations. William Marshall Anderson House in Circleville is on the National Register of Historic Places.
W. Marshall Anderson's son Thomas McArthur Anderson, was a decorated officer in the Civil War and again many years later during the Spanish-American War and the Philippine Insurrection that followed.[7]
References
- ^ Most surviving manuscripts and letters are at the Huntington Library.[1]
- ^ Rocky Mountain Journals: see listing under Books.
- ^ Ibid.
- ^ Biographical notes accompanying the published journals.
- ^ Andrew F. Rolle, The lost cause: the Confederate exodus to Mexico. 1992, University of Oklahoma Press.
- ^ See also Anderson's own diaries, published as An American in Maximilian's Mexico.
- ^ Thomas's career is better documented than his father's. See for example:[2][3]
Books
- The Rocky Mountain journals of William Marshall Anderson: the West in 1834 (1967)
- An American in Maximilian's Mexico, 1865-1866; the diaries of William Marshall Anderson, ed. by Ramón Eduardo Ruiz (1959)