JOHN A. ANDERSON, a member of the firm of Anderson Brothers, owners of the Cleburne Roller Mills, was born in Ontario, Canada. His father, George Anderson, was a native of Scotland and crossed the Atlantic to Canada in 1859, making his home in the province of Ontario, for a number of years. When yet a young man, however, he removed with his family to Outagamie county, Wisconsin, where he established a small grist mill, conducting business there for several years. In the late ’70s he removed to Tennessee, where he was in a similar business enterprise until 1886, when with his brother, John Anderson, he established a flour and corn mill at Cleburne, Texas, under the firm style of Anderson Brothers. The business has been continued with increasing success to the present time as the cultivation of wheat in Johnson county has grown from year to year. Mr. Anderson was actively engaged in the management of the business until his death in April, 1905, at which time his brother John and the subject of this review became owners of the plant and business, which is till conducted under the old firm name. George Anderson was a member of the Methodist church and was one of the representative citizens and business men of Cleburne, honorable and reliable in all transactions and enterprising and energetic in everything that he undertook.
John A. Anderson became connected with the milling business in his youth, entering on this work in Wisconsin in 1874 and continuing it in Tennessee and Texas. He has been connected with the mill at Cleburne since its establishment and he had an accurate and expert knowledge of the milling business and the millwright’s trade before coming to this city. He had occupied several good positions as a millwright in various northern and eastern cities, principally in Buffalo and New York. The Cleburne Roller Mills, of which he is now one of the proprietors, has a capacity of one hundred barrels of flour and fifty barrels of corn meal per day and does a general commercial and shipping business, keeping in touch with the methods of modern milling and making additions and improvements from time to time.
Mr. Anderson was married in Tennessee to Miss Mollie Maniere and they have a constantly growing circle of friends in Cleburne.
Source: B. B. Paddock, History and Biographical Record of North and West Texas (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1906), Vol. II, pp. 295-296.