Edmond Pierce Anderson was an early pioneer and a merchant in Moulton, Lawrence County, Alabama. He was born 1800 and reared in Cumberland County, Virgina. He married Adelaide Dechand of Abingdon, Virginia and they moved to Moulton in 1823 where their oldest son, James Morrow Anderson, was born July 30, 1824. After a living a few years in Moulton, the family moved to Winchester, Tennessee, where Edmond died at the age of twenty-seven. They had one more son before Edmond died, Edmond Pierce Anderson, Jr.
At the age of twelve, James Morrow Anderson became a clerk. He graduated from Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee in 1848 and for two years, he taught school at Winchester Academy. During his spare time he read law in the office of Judge Nathan Green, chief justice of Tennessee and father of Gen. Thomas Green. James M. was admitted to the bar at Winchester in 1849 then he moved to Rusk, Cherokee, Texas and established a partnership with Judge Stockton P. Donley. At the age of thirty-five, James was elected to represent Cherokee County in the Secession Convention, January 28, through February 4, 1861. On September 29, 1861, he enlisted as a private in Capt. John F. F. Dottery’s Company H of Col. James Reily’s Fourth Texas Mounted Volunteers but was discharged the following month. Later in the Civil War, he served briefly as a Confederate private during the Red River campaign.
In 1866, he moved to Waco, Texas and established a partnership with Richard Coke. “His attention, I am informed, has been almost exclusively devoted to his profession, eschewing politics and office; never having departed from this rule but twice—he was in the secession convention of 1860 and the Legislature of 1873 as a Democrat. He has the reputation of being one of the foremost lawyers of the State and an able legislator. He was the law partner of Senator Coke when he was elected Governor of Texas”
He was married 1st to Jane Buchanan on September 18, 1849. She died in March 1850 and he married 2nd Winifred Polk of Rusk on November 26, 1851. Her grandfather was CharlesPolk (1760), a Revolutionary war soldier buried in San Augustine County, Texas. James M. was a Baptist.
Col. James Morrow returned to Moulton, Lawrence County, Alabama in 1850 to “see the place of his nativity, from which I infer that he is a man of sentiment.” He died at his home in Waco on June 3, 1889.
James and Winifred Polk had the following children:
EARLY SETTLERS OF ALABAMA NOTES AND GENEALOGIES by Col. JAMES EDMONDS SAUNDERS LAWRENCE COUNTY, ALA VOL I by his granddaughter ELIZABETH SAUNDERS BLAIR STUBBS NEW ORLEANS: L Graham & Son Ltd., Printers, 207-211 Baronne St. 1899 Reprinted by Willo Publishing Company Tuscaloosa, Alabama 1961
Biographical Encyclopedia of Texas. Martin Hardwick Hall, The Confederate Army of New Mexico (Austin: Presidial Press, 1978). James D. Lynch, The Bench and Bar of Texas (St. Louis, 1885). Marcus J. Wright, comp., and Harold B. Simpson, ed., Texas in the War, 1861–1865 (Hillsboro, Texas: Hill Junior College Press, 1965).
