John T. Anderson

John Thomas Anderson (April 5, 1804 – August 27, 1879) was a nineteenth-century American lawyer, iron manufacturer and politician who served in both chambers of the Virginia General Assembly, representing Botetourt and nearby counties.

His father had moved into the Appalachian mountains from Delaware to mine and manufacture iron, and also operated the Walnut Hill plantation using enslaved labor.

However, their only child to reach adulthood, Joseph Washington Anderson (1836-1863), enlisted in the Confederate States Army, became an artillery officer and died in Mississippi in May 1863, although not before he married Miss Anna Morris of Louisa County and sired children who would survive their grandparents.

[7] However, he failed to win re-election to the state Senate in 1843, but in 1850, Botetourt's voters (along with those of neighboring Roanoke, Alleghany and Bath Counties elected Anderson as one of their three delegates to the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1850, alongside Fleming B. Miller and William Watts.

[8] He again won election to the House of Delegates representing Botetourt and Craig Counties in 1859, serving alongside James McDowell[9] In the months preceding the American Civil War, unlike his brother Francis, John Anderson became a prominent secessionist, and as a member of the Committee on Military Affairs from 1860 to 1861 prepared for hostilities.

Joy overseer, William Nace, who enlisted in the 22nd Virginia Infantry and who missed the Battle of Gettysburg to attend to his dying father, would become one of the last surviving Confederate veterans in that area, and his modern descendants would revisit the rebuilt Mt.