Dates

• Existence: 1769 - 1850

Biography

Robert Anderson was an Edinburgh-based ironmonger and businessman.

Born in the West Bow, Robert was the firstborn of William Anderson and Agnes Greig. Robert was seven when his mother died, with three little brothers younger than himself, James, William, and Charles. Robert and James were educated at Watson's Hospital, a Merchant School endowed in 1741 by a group of businessmen in Edinburgh. On leaving school, Robert began work in his father's ironmonger's shop at the foot of the West Bow, and as a young man he travelled round Scotland on business for his father.

Robert was brought up in the Independent Church in Candlemaker Row, but by the time he was twenty-one, he had come to believe that infant baptism was not enough, so he joined the Baptists and was baptised by full immersion by the pastor, Archibald McLean. Robert remained a very religious man all his life.

He joined the Scotch Baptists, whose pastors were unpaid, and who also allowed the elders of the congregation to preach or ‘exhort’ at their meetings. Soon he was officially appointed by the church to preach the Gospel. Robert Anderson took great care in writing his sermons and kept notebooks of those he preached in and around Edinburgh, at Leith, Gilmerton, Dalkeith, Pentland, Edmonstone, and Little vantage, ten miles west of the city; across the Forth in Anstruther, Dunfermline, Newburgh, and Dundee; and further afield at Galashiels and Perth.

In 1794, Robert Anderson married Ann Lothian, the daughter of a Glasgow minister and teacher of mathematics, and when Robert was twenty-seven, he was admitted as a Burgess and Guild-brother of Edinburgh, in right of his father before him. William was well satisfied with his son’s work as clerk in the shop in the West Bow and after Robert's marriage, he decided to take him into co-partnership. An agreement was drawn up and Robert received a quarter share of the stock in the shop, valued at £1605, and was also to have a quarter share of the profits.

After his father's death in 1804, Robert branched out in business, taking over a shop in Adam Square beside the University or College as it was then called. Robert Anderson, as well as selling ironmonger, had been made agent for the Bristol Copper Company, and for Richard Collins. His father's business contacts had ranged from Birmingham and Sheffield in the south, to Tain and Inverness in the north, and Robert still travelled on business. He kept the two shops in the West Bow and Adam Square for three years, then he sublet the West Bow shop to Alexander Johnston, an ironmonger. Free of business in the West Bow, Robert Anderson could now concentrate all his energies on his fine shop in Adam Square, which he had for twelve years. After this, Robert gave up retail trade and became full-time agent for Rotherham and Gospel Oak Ironworks and others. After two years, he joined with another firm to establish Crawford & Anderson’s, wholesale iron and copper merchants, of Baltic Street, Leith. Three years later, he was on his own again, as a general and commission agent, and then he formed Robert Anderson & Co., metal merchants and general agents, with an office at 11 Constitution Street, Leith. Robert's business remained in Leith for the rest of its days and, as his father had been known as William Anderson of the West Bow, Robert became known as Robert Anderson of Leith.

Robert and Ann Lothian had ten children. All of them started lessons at four or five and the boys went to the High School when they were nine, while the girls entered a school for young ladies. Three of their children died in infancy. Their firstborn, William, a clever, lovable boy, died at fifteen, and their daughter, Anne, at sixteen; another son, James, died aged twenty-six, having caused his parents worry and heartbreak. Only four of their children survived them: Robert junior, Euphemia, Agnes, and Charles, all of whom married and had children, except Euphemia.

When he was sixty-eight, Robert had a stroke which left him partly paralysed, and he and Ann had to give up their house at 7 Springfield, and go to live with their daughter Agnes. Agnes was married to William McKenzie, a silk mercer, and they and their family welcomed the Andersons into their home at 51 North Bridge. Robert's paralysis improved slowly till he was able to walk to and from Church, where he listened to the preaching of his two co-pastors, H.D. Dickie and his own son, Robert Anderson junior. Robert died in 1850.

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