Brigadier General Samuel R. Anderson was born in Sumner County in 1804. He was a son of Robert Anderson, a Virginian, and an officer in the war for independence. He received a good education, married a Miss. Trousdale of the same county, served as Lieutenant Colonel of the famous First Tennessee, "The Bloody First," in the war with Mexico. On May 9, 1861, he was commissioned a Major General in the State Troops and Brigadier General in the provisional army of the Confederate States on July 9, and on August 5 was assigned to the command of a brigade, which included the First, Seventh, and Fourteenth Tennessee Regiment of infantry for service in the mountains of West Virginia under General Loring. Later he served under Lee, Jackson, Magruder and Archer. On November 4, 1854, he was recommissioned Brigadier General. After the close of the war he returned to Tennessee, and died in Nashville in 1883.