William Henry Anderson was born on January 12, 1836, in Londonderry, New Hampshire, to Francis Anderson. His father was a farmer who owned $4,000 of real estate by 1850. He grew up and attended school in Londonderry before enrolling at Yale University.
He joined the Crocodile Club, a student organization, and in January 1858, he declared it Yale’s “most popular club.” On February 9, 1858, Anderson and his friends encountered a group of firemen near the university. An altercation broke out, and a student shot one of the firemen. As Anderson explained to his father, “suspicion of course fell upon the club and perhaps justly and we were all implicated and are as much guilty as another in the eye of the law.” Nonetheless, he refused to testify in court, and he was forced to spend time in jail. Yale ultimately expelled several of the students and asked the others to disband the Crocodile Club.
Anderson remained at Yale, and he graduated in 1859. According to an early biographer, he then “went South and tutored in families in Mississippi and New Orleans.” He eventually settled in Lowell, Massachusetts, and he studied law at Harvard University. He married Mary A. Hine on October 1, 1868, and their daughter Frances was born around 1878.
He worked as a lawyer in Lowell, and by 1870, he owned $10,000 of real estate and $15,000 of personal property. He also served as a director of the Merchants’ Bank and the Union National Bank. He died of an intestinal obstruction in Lowell on April 14, 1902.