The career of the gentleman whose name appears above most happily illustrates what may be attained by faithful and continued effort in carrying out honest purposes. It is the simple story of a man unknown to fame as the world estimates greatness but measured by the true standard of excellence his life abounds in much that is admirable in that he has always endeavored to do the right and to live in harmony with his ideal of duty. Thomas J. Anderson was born in 1858 and claims Leavenworth County, Kansas as the place of his nativity. Caswell Anderson, his father was born in Tennessee in 1818 and followed blacksmithing for his life work. When he moved to Kansas the elder Anderson carried on farming in connection with his trade, and after living in that state for several years, changed his abode to Benton County, Arkansas. There he also combined blacksmithing with farming until his death in 1886. The maiden name of the mother was Elizabeth Davis; she was both born and married in Tennessee, departing this life in Kansas when Thomas J. was a small child. Thomas J. Anderson was young when his father migrated to Arkansas, and his early life was spent on a farm in that state. The public schools afforded him the means of acquiring a practical knowledge of the fundamental branches of study, and at the age of eighteen he left home to make his own way in the world. After following agriculture for two or three years in his adopted county, he went to Texas, where for a period of three years he followed agriculture with varying success, thence returning to Arkansas. Remaining one year there. Mr. Anderson went to Kansas and engaged in lead mining, which business received his attention until the spring of 1884, when he came to Wyoming, and stopped for a short time on Twin Creek, subsequently removing to his present place near Fontenelle, Uinta County. Mr. Anderson owns 320 acres of land lying forty miles north of Kemmerer, which he has stocked with a fine lot of cattle, building up a prosperous business as a stockman, also earning the reputation of being an enterprising and public-spirited citizen. While not as extensively engaged in cattleraising as some of his neighbors he has yet met with encouraging success, his investments proving fortunate and his real-estate steadily increasing in value. He keeps in touch with everything connected with the cattle business is a close and intelligent observer by his sound judgement and prudent management as well as by determined perseverance overcoming many obstacles in the pathway of his success and he is now on the well defined high road to prosperity fame and fortune. Mr. Anderson possesses the rare faculty of binding friends to him as with bonds of steel and is exceedingly popular among those with whom he mingles and he ever manifests a lively concern in the material and intellectual advancement of the community of which he is an honored resident. His taste and inclinations naturally fit him for the independent life he now leads and with his fortune bound up in the West he will in all probability, make this part of the country his permanent place of abode. In 1882 Mr. Anderson chose a life partner in Miss Isabella Robinson a daughter of James and Mary E. Robinson, the union resulting in the birth of five children, Fred, Pearl, Allie, Abbie and Thomas. The father of Mrs. Anderson was a native of Tennessee and by trade a tanner. He moved to Arkansas a number of years ago and died in that state in 1861. Mrs. Anderson was born and reared in Arkansas and there lived until her removal to Wyoming.
