Dear Kinfolk,

Albert Jackson Anderson was the sixth of eleven children born to Henry M. and Sarah Collier Anderson.  Albert was born Feb. 15, 1836 in Hot Springs, Garland Co., Arkansas.  A.J. would be my great-grandfather, my daughters gg grandfather and my grandchildren’s ggg grandfather.

It was a wild and colorful time in history that Albert lived—– fought in the Civil War for the South,  a brothers hanging,  served as a Texas Ranger and Scout, and much more that I will cover in the future blogs.

Albert J. Anderson's picture was sent to me by a distant cousin. Check out the beard! I would guess this picture may have been taken sometime after he served in the Confederate Army, around age 35+. All pictures of Albert have a long beard.

Sometime before his 12th birthday, his father Henry moved the family from Arkansas to Williams County, Texas Republic ( presently in the Austin area.)  This land was in the Comanche Indian empire, covering 240,000 square miles.  The Comanches controlled large chunks of five present day states–Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, and Oklahoma.  They were the world’s best horsemen and they were the unchallenged military masters of the southern plains.  At the core of their identity they were hunters and warriors, precisely what our great-grandfather and others were threatening to deny them!

In 1848-49, the army sent it’s engineers to build a line of five forts, stretching from Fort Worth to San Antonio.  They were obsolete the minute they were finished.  The line of settlement had already engulfed them.  For thirty years, 1850-80, Henry and his family would have lived in fear of the Comanche raids on the white settlers.  The census shows them living at or near Texas Forts — Fort Belknap, Fort Griffin and Fort Davis.  Henry and his boys were cattle owners and would have participated in driving their longhorn cattle up the Western Trail, which led through Fort Griffin and across the Red River and north to Dodge City,Kansas.  The trail also happened to lead through the heart of the Comanche-Kiowa Reservations in Oklahoma.  One outfit lost 295 head to the Comanches on a single drive.  The cattle were worth about $4.00 per head in Texas and much more in Kansas, where they would be shipped back East to a hungry beef market.

I found a wonderful explanation of what life among the Comanches must have been like to our grandparents in the book  EMPIRE OF THE SUMMER MOON, by S.C. Gwynne.

Anderson Family Chart

Next chapter will be about the hanging of one of the Anderson brothers.

Jim Lee