Robert Anderson (1781–1859), businessman and public official, was born in Gloucester County. He worked in the mercantile line in Williamsburg, served as a regimental clerk and adjutant in the Virginia militia, and fought in the War of 1812. Anderson was the mayor of Williamsburg, 1811–12, 1820–21, 1827–28, and 1831. First as a Federalist and then as a Whig, he mounted numerous unsuccessful campaigns for state and federal elective office beginning about 1806, and from the 1830s through the 1850s he was an agent for several insurance companies. In 1850 Anderson’s personal property was valued at $10,000 and included twenty-four slaves. Having been denied legislative permission late in life to emancipate “about a dozen” of his slaves, in his will he ordered eight of them freed. Anderson had sizable landholdings in and near Yorktown, where he died (Anderson Papers [NcD, ViHi, and ViWC]; Anderson Family Papers [NjP]; WMQ description begins William and Mary Quarterly, 1892–  description ends , 1st ser., 12 [1903]: 118; Washington Daily National Intelligencer, 5 July 1813; Richmond Enquirer, 14 June 1839, 22 June 1847, 28 Mar. 1848; DNA: RG 29, CS, York Co., 1850, 1850 slave schedules; petition by Anderson, 18 Dec. 1855 [Vi: RG 78, Legislative Petitions, York Co.]; JHD description begins Journal of the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia description ends [1855–56 sess.], 206, 307 [16 Jan., 8 Feb. 1856]; New-York Observer, 10 Feb. 1859; York Co. Will Book, 13:447–51; will filed with Maria Griffin et al. v. Executor of Helen M. Anderson et al. [Vi: James City Co. Chancery Causes, case 1873–005]).