Joseph Anderson

Who was Joseph Anderson?

Joseph Anderson was the secretary to the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1922 to 1970 and was a general authority of the church from 1970 until his death.

Anderson was born in Salt Lake City, Utah Territory in 1889, the same year that Wilford Woodruff became President of the Church. Anderson graduated from the Weber Stake Academy in 1905. A few years later he served as a missionary in Germany and Switzerland.

Anderson became secretary to the First Presidency of the church in 1922. On 6 April 1970, church president Joseph Fielding Smith released Anderson from his secretarial duties and called him to serve as an Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. When that calling was abolished in 1976, Anderson was ordained a Seventy and became a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy. In 1978, Anderson became an emeritus general authority and was relieved of his day-to-day duties as a Seventy. Anderson died in Salt Lake City at the age of 102 and was buried at Salt Lake City Cemetery.

Anderson is one of only two general authorities of the church to reach the age of 100, the second being former Presiding Patriarch Eldred G. Smith, who in 2009 surpassed Anderson as the longest-lived general authority in LDS Church history.