Anderson, Charles William, 1810-1901 (ironmonger)
Dates
- Existence: 1810 - 1901
Biography
Charles Anderson was an Edinburgh-based ironmonger and businessman. He was the tenth and youngest child of Robert Anderson and his wife Ann Lothian. By the age of nineteen, he was assisting his father in the business of Robert Anderson & Company in Leith, travelling about to Perth, Dundee, and Aberdeen, Birmingham and London. He stayed with his parents in Leith until he was twenty-four, when he went to live at 7 Gayfield Square with his brother Robert and his wife.
Five years later, he married nineteen-year-old Jane Forbes Inglis. Jane and he had two children, Anne and Robert. Sadly, Robert did not thrive and Jane took him to stay with her parents, now in London, where the baby died aged eight months. Jane's death followed within the year. Charles remarried three years later, with Anne Urquhart. In the next two years, Charles and Anne had two daughters, Jane and Euphemia, and as Charles's mother and father had come to live with them, the flat was now too small, and they moved in Laverockbank, Trinity.
Two sons were born to Anne in this house, Charles John Urquhart Anderson, and Robert John who died in infancy. A few years later, Charles moved his family to Eskbank, Dalkeith, outside Edinburgh. After his father died, Charles diversified the iron and copper trade of Robert Anderson & Company by manufacturing white zinc paint and concrete garden ornaments. Charles took a partner into the firm, D.W. Kemp, a fellow Baptist, and they then concentrated wholly on the manufacture of paint and concrete, and when he retired about 1890, Charles transferred the business to Mr Kemp. Robert Anderson & Company continued to operate in this way in Jane Street, Leith, till 1917, when it ceased to exist after nearly ninety years' trading.
Outside business, Charles had a great interest in Crieff Hydro and was the first chairman of the board of directors from 1867 to 1886. He frequently stayed at the Hydro with his family, and enjoyed the company in Strathearn House, as it was then called.
A Baptist like his father, Charles was pastor for fourteen years of Bristo Place Baptist Church, the third Anderson to hold this office. After 1884, Charles, who did not approve of paid ministers, worshipped with a breakaway congregation in Hopeton Hall, Fountainbridge, where the pastors received no emolument.
After eight years in Dalkeith, Charles and his family returned to Edinburgh and moved on the south side of the city, and it was here that he and Anne continued to live, with their unmarried daughter Euphemia running the house. His wife Anne died in 1881 aged seventy. Charles survived her for twenty years and died in 1901, aged ninety.