William Anderson

William John Anderson Jr. (February 14, 1876 – August 28, 1959)

Early life and career Anderson was born to William John Anderson and Philomen Langlois in Shoreham, Vermont, on February 14, 1874. His father was an emancipated slave from Virginia who had accompanied Col. Charles Hunsdon of the 11th Vermont Infantry Regiment home to Vermont after the American Civil War. Philomen Langlois was a Vermonter of French-Canadian and Native American heritage. The couple became farmers in the small town of Shoreham, on the shore of Lake Champlain, where they were the only residents of color. They purchased their farm from Dr. William Hitchcock, who had employed 17-year-old Anderson Sr. in 1866.

Anderson attended school locally before attending Mount Hermon School for Boys in Massachusetts, where he earned his keep working in the school laundry starting in 1892. In 1897 or 1899, he was hired to work as a doorman at Hotel Champlain, summer residence of William McKinley. McKinley took an interest in the young man, asking him why he held so menial a position and thereby encouraging him to aspire to higher station in life. He served in the US Army during World War I.

Political and agricultural career Anderson started the Diamond A Orchard on his parents' farm in 1911 and returned to Shoreham permanently in 1920. There he became a prosperous farmer who cultivated an orchard totaling 3,500 apple trees, mainly MacIntosh and Northern Spy cultivars, by the early 1930s. At its zenith in 1943, 40,000 bushels of apples were harvested from Anderson's orchard.

His older sister, Mary Annette Anderson, was the first Black woman to graduate from Middlebury College, in 1899.