Home › A › Anderson, William Colman

Anderson, William Colman

was born July 11, 1853, near Greeneville, Tenn.

He was raised on a farm; graduated from Tusculum college in 1876; read law at Newport, Tenn., and was admitted to the bar in 1878. He was elected to the state legislature from Cocke and Sevier counties in 1880 as a republican; was chairman of the republican congressional committee for the first district for six years; was appointed a principal examiner of contested land claims in the general land office in 1889, and afterwards promoted for merit, first to chief of the contest division, and then to chief clerk of the general land office. He was assistant secretary of the republican national committee, with headquarters in New York, during the campaign of 1892, and took an active part in that campaign. He returned to Newport in the spring of 1893 to resume his law practice, and was nominated in 1894 and elected to the fifty-fourth congress as a republican.