Anderson, James, 1745-1807

James Anderson was Farm Manager at The Mount Vernon Estate. Anderson was raised on his father's farm about 40 miles north of Edinburgh, Scotland, near the village of Inverkeithing. At the age of twenty-one, Anderson began a farming apprenticeship, and at the end of the second year began to manage the estate of the farm owner's uncle. Anderson held that post for three years and then for the next nineteen owned his own farm, mills, and distillery. During this time Anderson married Helen Gordon of Inverkeithing, with whom he had seven children. By the early 1790s, the entire family moved to the United States. Anderson rented a farm in the northern part of Fairfax County for two years and then over the next several managed farms for other people. He agreed to come to work as a farm manager for George Washington in October of 1796. He stayed on in the position until Martha Washington's death in 1802.