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| Anna Anderson's Grave |
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| Nora Jones Steele with Anna Anderson's Spinning Wheel |
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| Anderson Sisters |
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| Aunt Rainey, Anna's Slave |
Anna, known as Annie, was born March 16, 1816 in the Blackburn’s Fork community of Jackson County, Tennessee, the sixth of ten children born to Thomas Shirley and Judith Robinson Anderson. Anna was about 5 feet 2 inches tall and very thin, weighing about 115 pounds. Anna had light hair, a fairly dark complexion with blue eyes. She was quite good looking.
About 1832 Anna Anderson married Joshua Bartlett whose family lived at Blackburn’s Fork, Jackson County, Tennessee which was close to Spring Creek. Both families attended the Spring Creek Baptist Church. When each of his children married, Thomas Anderson (Anna’s father) gave them $10.00 to start housekeeping and a cow and calf valued at $10.00.
About 1834 Joshua and Annie moved to Buffalo Valley, Jackson County, which became Putnam County in 1854.
Anna’s father, Thomas Anderson, who was very wealthy, sent word for her to come to his place and he would give her a slave or two. She selected a wench, as the female slaves were called, named Aisley. When Aisley learned she was selected, she cried because she didn’t want to leave all of her children. Not wanting to cause Aisley grief, Anna then selected Rainey instead (who helped raise Anna’s children) and her son Jerry (valued at $1400) . Everyone grew to love Rainey. Not much is known about Jerry except that after he was freed from slavery he attacked a white girl and was lynched. At the time of Thomas Anderson’s death all of his remaining slaves were sold at auction. One slave named Ike, had been a kind of body servant for his master. The family did not want him sold and subsequently sent someplace else in the South. The family told Joshua that if he would bid on Ike, they would help pay for him. Ike tried to make the debt lighter by pretending that his ankle was in a bad condition. Nevertheless, he brought $1,500 at auction. He was brought to Joshua’s house in Buffalo Valley.
At one time during the Civil War, two men were passing through Buffalo Valley on their way to get their families in order to move them to new homes in Kentucky. While in the valley they were shot and seriously wounded by two Rebel soldiers. The injured men were taken to the Garner home nearby. When Anna heard of this she sent her 15 year old daughter, Rebecca, to see if there were anything they could do to help the injured men. As Rebecca entered the door where the two injured men lay, one of them looked up and asked her for a drink of cold water. She started to the spring with a wooden bucket and a gourd dipper when she was told that the Rebels had ordered them not to wait on the injured men and that anyone who did would be killed. Rebecca hurried on and said, “Let ‘em kill.”
She brought the water and gave one of the injured men a drink. He asked her to pour the water on his bowels as he was hot with fever. Rebecca stayed the whole night pouring water on him. He died the next night. Three weeks later his wife came to meet the people who had befriended her husband in his hour of greatest need. She told the family that she would give them a half bushel of salt if they would let Rebecca go with her to bring it back. Rebecca started on the long journey, but five miles into the journey she lost her courage and could not bear to think of going so far from home. She turned her horse around and the much needed salt was forgotten.
Rebecca’s courage in the face of armed Rebels, her tenderness in caring for the injured man, along with her desire not to be so far from home, was a reflection of how she had been raised and the atmosphere of the home in which she was growing up.
Annie was very industrious. She inquired about the welfare of others and was known to have been one of the most generous people who ever lived. She would often go and work for the poor when they were unable to do their own and would not let Joshua know about it.
She had a peculiar method of talking. She would say something like, "That ar's a good principle.” Anna was very opposed to the fiddle thinking, it came from the dead. She liked to sing and had a good singing voice.
In May 1880, Joshua and Annie gave a portion of their of land (about one acre) for the purpose of building a school and church house in Putnam County beginning at the Buffalo Valley Road.
After Joshua died, Annie and Aunt Rainey stayed on at the home. Annie later broke up housekeeping and she and Aunt Rainey went to live with Annie’s daughter, Rebecca Bartlett Jones. Annie would visit her other children when she was needed.
In the spring of 1892 Anna left her home in Buffalo Valley, on the eastern side of the Caney Fork River, crossed the river and went to the home of her grandchildren, Sylvanus and Arzonie Vaughn Bartlett. Sylvanus and Arzonie (Sylvanus’s first wife) were cousins who had married each other and lived in Lancaster, Smith County. Anna went there to be the midwife to Arzonie who was expecting her first baby.
Becky Garrison, who had worked for Anna for a long time, went to the home to help Sylvanus before Arzonie was confined and she stayed there. She cooked some custard pies—cooked more than Sylvanus could eat—and they soured. Anna was the type who didn't like to throw anything away and ate some of the soured custard before breakfast even though Becky had cautioned her not to eat it as it might make her sick It was only a short time until she began vomiting and purging at the same time. She stayed at Sylvanus’, which was on Mitt Bartlett’s farm, for some time. Mitt was Anna’s son. She was finally taken to Mitt’s home because Arzona was sick. Anna was there only about two weeks when she died. The cause of her death was cholera morbus.
A late spring flood came, backing up the creeks and rendering the river impassible except by boat. Because there was no way to transport her body across the river to her home in Buffalo Valley, she was buried in a small family cemetery close to her son’s home. It was called the Sadler Graveyard on the bend of the Caney Fork River near a bridge on Mitt Bartlett’s farm.
