John Anderson (1805–1855) was a Scottish missionary and the founder of the mission of the Free Church of Scotland at Madras, India.

[3] During part of this period he taught at the Mariners' School at Leith; was tutor in the family of Alexander Cowan, Callander, and at Troqueer Holm on the Nith[4] Anderson was licensed by the Presbytery of Dumfries on 3 May 1836.

On 3 April he took charge of St Andrew's School (established by two Scottish chaplains, Matthew Bowie and George James Lawrie in 1835) beginning his labours as a missionary with fifty-nine Hindu boys and young men - the nucleus of the Madras Christian College.

Anderson's object, as stated in the prospectus of the first mission school opened by him at Madras, was ‘to convey through the channel of a good education as great an amount of truth as possible to the native mind, and especially of Bible truth,’ the ultimate aim being ‘that each of these institutions shall be a normal seminary in which teachers and preachers may be trained up to convey to their benighted countrymen the benefit of a sound education and the blessings of the gospel of Christ.’ Anderson laid great stress upon education and native preachers in all missionary effort.

The first school established by Anderson, which formed the nucleus of the institution now known as the Madras Christian College, speedily acquired a high reputation.

Indian girls marry early, and native parents see none of the material benefits to be derived from their education, which induce them to send their sons to mission schools, even at the risk of their being led to change their religion.

But these obstacles were gradually overcome in some measure, and before Anderson's death seven hundred Hindu and Mohammedan girls, the majority of the former belonging to families of good caste, were under instruction in the schools of the mission.

He had laboured indefatigably for eighteen years at the work for which he had been set apart; only once during that period revisiting his native land, whither he was accompanied by the Rev.