Andrew Anderson

Who was Andrew Anderson?

Dr. Andrew Anderson II was a physician, philanthropist, mayor and benefactor of St. Augustine, Florida. Anderson commissioned multiple works of art to adorn a variety of public spaces in the City of St. Augustine, including the two statues of lions places at the approach to the famed Bridge of Lions.

Anderson was the son of New York physician Dr. Andrew Anderson I an 1813 graduate of the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons. His father arrived in St. Augustine in 1829 aboard the schooner General Jackson along with his mother Mary and two sisters Hannah and Emily. Within a few years the elder Anderson had become a pillar of the community. In 1830 he was elected head of the local temperance society, St. Augustine alderman in 1833 and 1834, a justice of the peace and an elder of the Presbyterian Church in 1839.

The elder Anderson's first wife Mary Anderson died on September 8, 1837. In 1838 he married Clarissa Cochrane Fairbanks a widow from New Hampshire, it is with Clarissa that he would sire Andrew Anderson the second, born in 1839.