Anderson, a little hamlet of Smith county, is located near the head of White Rock creek, about 9 miles northeast of Smith Center, the county seat, from which place mail is received by rural free delivery.
Anderson County was named for Joseph C. Anderson, a member of the first territorial legislature, which erected and organized the county in 1855. It is located in the southeastern part of the state in the second tier of counties west of Missouri, about 50 miles south of the Kansas river and 70 miles north of the southern boundary of the state. It is 24 miles square and has an area of 576 square miles. On the north it is bounded by Franklin county, on the east of Linn, on the south by Allen and on the west by Coffey.
When the first white settlers came to what is now Anderson county in the spring of 1854 they found some of the fields which the Indians had cultivated. They were Valentine Gerth and Francis Meyer, who came from Missouri and settled on the Pottawatomie near the present site of Greeley. These men were without families but planted and cultivated the old Indian fields the first summer. Henry Harmon came with his family and settled near the junction of the branches of the Pottawatomie. During the summer and fall more settlers came, among whom were Henderson Rice, W. D. West, Thomas Totton, Anderson Cassel, J. S. Waitman and Dr. Rufus Gilpatrick. In the winter of 1854–55 quite a number of Germans came to the county and settled along the south branch of the Pottawatomie above Greeley, where they built several cabins and selected valuable timber claims. In the spring of 1855 they returned to St. Louis and on account of the territorial troubles never came back. Their claims were soon taken up by other settlers.
When Gov. Reeder, on Nov. 8, 1854, issued a proclamation ordering an election for the 29th, the region now embraced in Anderson county was made a part of the Fifth district. The election was ordered to be held at the house of Henry Sherman near the place called Dutch Henry's crossing on the Pottawatomie. At the election for members of the first territorial legislature, A. M. Coffey and David Lykins were elected to the council and Allen Wilkerson and H. W. Yonger representatives. Of the resident voters, about 50 in number and practically all free-state men, only a few voted, but the Missourians came over and cast about 200 pro-slavery votes. At the election for a delegate to Congress in Oct., 1855, George Wilson was the only person voting in the district. Samuel Mack, one of the judges, refused to vote regarding the election as a farce, most of the voters being residents of Missouri who came over on horseback and in wagons, well supplied with whiskey and guns. (See Reeder's Administration.) Because of the outrages committed upon the free-state settlers, a military organization, made up of Franklin and Anderson county men and called the Pottawatomie Rifles, was formed in the fall of 1855. Among the members were Dr. Rufus Gilpatrick, M. Kilbourn, W. Ayers, H. H. Williams, August Bondi, Samuel Mack, James Townsley and Jacob Benjamin from Anderson county.
The legislature having defined the bounds of the county, then provided
