Los Angeles County
Biographies
JAMES ARCHIBALD ANDERSON, JR.
“Los Angeles had no
better, more useful or more patriotic citizen than James Archibald Anderson,”
wrote a contemporary biographer. “To him
more than to any other person in this city is due the splendid legal victory
which won for Los Angeles from the Southern Pacific and the Banning interests
the city waterfront properties at the Los Angeles harbor and mad possible that
great and growing municipal activity.
This is only one of the many civic ballets which Mr. Anderson fought and
won for the City of Angels
during the forty-four years that he claimed it as his home. His name is written among the highest on the
honor roll of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and of other institutions
that have worked for and achieved civic betterment. When he came to Los Angels in her early days,
with a fighting heart and a determination to succeed, Mr. Anderson found the
city full of splendid promise and possessed the vision to appreciate its full
significance. By his unselfish devotion
to the public interest and his lovable personality he won and held in enviable degree the respect and affection
of the people. As a descendant of some
of the oldest families of America
he traced his lineage back to pre-Revolutionary days and to some of the
founders of our great republic.
Consequently he justly cherished a pride of birth. He was, however, a true California, with a strong and deep local
patriotism. Brought up in the south, he
was by birth and education a southern gentleman, than which there is no finer
title anywhere.”
Mr. Anders
was born in La Grange, Fayette
County, Tennessee, on January 17,
1857, a son of James Archibald and Louis Catherine (Trent) Anderson. In the acquirement of an education he
attended the public schools of his native state and the University
of Tennessee, then known as the East Tennessee
University. In early life he went to the extreme frontier
of western Texas, settling a few miles south
of the present city of Abilene
in that state, and there spent several years, largely for the benefit of his
health, in the cattle business. Later,
in the early ‘80s, he joined his father in Tucson, Arizona,
where he was for a time clerk of the probate court, where he studied law and
where in the early part of 1885 he was admitted to the bar. He came to Los Angeles with his father later that year
and practiced his profession. He was a member
of the firm of Anderson & Anderson, of which his father, the senior James
A. Anderson, was for many years the head.
Mr. Anderson was regarded as one of the very highest authorities on
water rights law, and in this connection his firm represented and still
represents, as counsel, a number of important water interest, including among
others the San Gabriel Valley Protective Association, the Los Angeles Land
& Water Company, the Appleton Land, Water & Power company and the San
Dimas Water Company. Mr. Anderson was
chairman of the first board of public works of Los Angeles under the city’s
present charter, and as such was largely instrumental in the in the building of
the Los Angeles-Owens River Aqueduct in 1906 and 1907.
Along
strictly professional lines Mr. Anderson held membership in the Los Angeles
County Bar Association, of which he was a past president, in the California
State Bar Association and in the American Bar Association. He was also highly esteemed among his fellow
members of the sunset Club and the California Club and long enjoyed an enviable
reputation in social, professional and civic circles of his adopted city. Mr. Anderson was married on September 9,
1884, in Texas, to Louise Rembert Moon, a native of Tennessee, and they had
three children: Mrs. Elise Watkins;
Rembert C., an orchardist; and Trent G.
Mrs. Anderson died in February, 1912.
Transcribed
By: Michele Y. Larsen on October 3, 2012.
Source: California
of the South Vol. V,
by John Steven McGroarty, Pages 291-292,
Clarke Publ., Chicago, Los Angeles,
Indianapolis. 1933.
© 2012 Michele
Y. Larsen.
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