JOHN ANDERSON
Descendants: Mrs. Lillian Hannah Anderson Rankin
Mrs. Amanda Jane Anderson Dreyer Keller
Captain John Anderson came to America from Sweden when quite a young man, landing at Mobile, Ala. He, like so many of that land of Norse romance, was a seafaring man. In spite of the fact that he encountered some terrible storms, he, like most men who chose the sea for their life occupation, still kept to the seas.
After a short time in Mobile, h secured his own ship and set said for New Orleans.
Captain John Anderson landed in New Orleans as captain of the schooner "Troy." He was about 41 years of age when he met the captivating widow, Mrs. Hannah Bowen Yung, and her son, Christopher.
He married Mrs. Yung in 1852, and shortly afterward brought his wife and young step-son, Christopher Yung, to Corpus Christi, which he had visited with freight from New Orleans for General Taylor’s army while it was encamped at Corpus Christi. He was so agreeably impressed with the bay and the surrounding territory that he settled here and built a home near the beach, in the same block where the Nueces Hotel stands today. There he moved his family, and there he lived until his death. Captain Anderson, like his sea-going ancestors of Norseland of old, continued in the boating business, lightering vessels at Aransas Pass, because of the mud flats between the point and Corpus Christi which prevented at that time ocean-going vessels coming to anchor in Corpus Christi harbor.
Familiar with the salt beds of Laguna Madre from his boating, he built and owned an old salt mill, which he put to many good uses, grinding salt and corn and wood, as the demand presented itself.
More details will be given about this pioneer salt mill, because it was the most useful industry at that time, and was equal to the New Deal in giving work to the unemployed at the mines and the number in the mill was increased by the haulers by boat and by land. In some instances the salt ground at this mill was hauled as far as Oklahoma.
The salt ground in this mill was brought up from the Laguna Madre and about one hundred and fifty men were employed daily getting out the salt from the mines. Another industry was made possible by this old salt mill, that is, the curing of the hides of cattle, which at that time were being killed by the thousands on the ranges for their hides alone.
The news spread far and wide as these hides were shipped to the East, and a Boston concern set up a canning factory here, which flourished for a while. This led to a local meat packing industry by the Coleman-Fulton Pasture Co., under the title of the Coleman-Fulton Packing and Canning Co. This was the first large industry for saving all of the cattle, hides, meat, bones, and tallow. This packing concern was located at Rockport, Texas.
The following account of the old sawmill was taken from the Corpus Christi Caller many years ago:
"Salt was procurable in seemingly inexhaustible quantities 60 miles down the bay in the Laguna Madre, a long neck of shallow water which at that time was extremely saline. Evaporation would take place when the action of wind and tide washed the salty water up on the shore, leaving solid sheets of salt. This was cut away like ice, loaded in small boats and brought to the mill where it was ground with power from the windmill to various degrees of fineness. Table salt, salt to preserve cowhides and meat, ice cream salt, and rock salt to feed cattle were turned out at the little mill and bought by the people of the little village of Corpus Christi and neighboring communities which grew up around and gradually acquired names.
"Mesquite trees furnished the crooked posts which were sawed by the mill. Mesquite was about the only fuel known to these early settlers and it was stacked in front of the mill, with only a small rock breakwater between it and the bay. To this mill would come the village men with their wagons for the season’s supply of wood. Back home they would take it to their wives to use in mammoth ranges in which, even in summer days, a roaring fire must be made to cook each meal.
"The cotton gin in the mill was run by hand and was not larger than a bedroom dresser. It was fed from the front, and a roll of soft cotton was the result of its not very intricate machinery.
"But wood, if necessary, could be gathered in one’s back yard, and cotton could be picked from the seed at home. So it is for the salt that the little old mill is remembered, for not everyone could make the tiresome long trip up the bay for the essential seasoning.
"The three industries in the mill furnished a livelihood for Anderson and his family which took root and grew up with town in the residence next door." Ref. Times, June 15, 1936.
Going back to the meat packing industry of the old Salt Mill days, without which industry the former industry would have lagged, it is necessary for the student of the history of those times, and even by the present generation of Texans, to understand the great difficulty of establishing a meat packing factory in this section of the country when everyone lived on a farm, or so near to a farm that they were practically surrounded by the fields and woods of the farm.
But most important still is the fact that every farmer lived by the soil, and fed his cattle from the soil, and that every farm was a factory, which through the industry of the members of the family furnished every family with the necessities of life, from clothing and food, to the log-cabin home, and the building of stock shelters, and manufacturing the plows and wagons to haul the surplus" to market for flour or to the old Salt Mill for meal.
What farmer or farmer’s wife would go back to the farm factory of 1836 or the ox-cart to go to mill for salt and meal or perhaps to have a little cotton ginned with which to dye and weave the clothes they wore!
Captain Anderson’s Family
When little Hannah Anderson was born March 21, 1864, such confusion reigned in Corpus Christi that her father and mother had to start life all over again. The Civil War had wrought havoc in the industries of the county and carpetbag government was in full swing. However, a settled life was soon to bring hope and comfort to this God-fearing family. Capt. John Anderson was a man of much public spirit, and admired by all of his acquaintances for his frankness, honesty of purpose and square dealings. He was a member of the Methodist Church for 50 years, and in his younger days was a great worker in the church.
His sons, Captain Andrew and Captain Will, as well as his grandson, followed the seafaring life.
Capt. John Anderson’s daughters, Lillie Hannah Rankin and Amanda Jane Dreyer Keller, were born in Corpus Christi.
Mrs. Lillie Rankin was reared and married in the same old house on Water Street. She joined the First Methodist Church when a little child and all her life has been an active member and regular attendant upon all church and Sunday school services. Mrs. Rankin in an interview said: "I remember the Mexican raid of 1875 when three men were killed down at the Penescal at the Kenedy Ranch. My brother, Capt. Andrew Anderson, brought the bodies to Corpus Christi on his boat, and as a child I was much impressed by seeing the three boxes loaded on wagons and hauled to the cemetery. I also remember that two were buried in the Catholic Cemetery and one in the old Bay View Cemetery. Captain Anderson can give the names of the three men that were killed in this Mexican raid."
Mrs. Rankin’s children are Mrs. Ethel Waters, who lives in Corpus Christi, and has two sons, Clayton and George, very brilliant boys; Mary L. Rankin, a Business and Professional Club member who lives in Corpus Christi; son, Andrew Rankin, who lives in Corpus Christi and has one daughter, Alice Marie; also Mrs. Rankin’s son, Capt. Harold Wilson Rankin, deceased, a World War veteran, whose military service record is inscribed on a bronze gold star in the Gold Star Tree Court of Honor of Corpus Christi. Mrs. Rankin, the mother, by reason of this great honor conferred upon her son, is a God Star Mother of the World War. Mrs. Rankin lives at 1001 Chaparral Street, Corpus Christi. Her eldest sister, Mrs. Amanda Dreyer Keller, now lives in Galveston. She is the mother of five children by her first husband, Herbert Dreyer: John Dreyer, Reuben Dreyer and Elise Walker, wife of O. A. Walker, Jr., and Lillian Eaves, wife of John B. Eaves, both of whom live in Galveston. Herbert lives in Raymondville; John in Saxet Heights, Corpus Christi; Reuben in Los Angeles, Calif. Mrs. Amanda Dreyer Keller had one son by her second husband, Joe Keller: Ross Keller, who has been connected with one of the leading banks of Galveston since he graduated from school.
Ross J. Keller, when married to Miss Marion Reed, eldest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. LeRoy Wade Reed, in the Trinity Episcopal Church in Galveston, was cashier in the United States National Bank and is still connected with the same bank.
Mrs. Lillie H. Rankin is the wife of Wilson B. Rankin, deceased, a pioneer citizen, and like Mrs. Lillie, is the descendant of a pioneer who came here from Scotland in 1852, the year in which the little frontier settlement of Corpus Christi was incorporated.
Wilson B. Rankin’s parents were James and Agnes Rankin who possessed the energy and industry of that land of the Scottish clans. The Rankin family, after helping to build the city of Corpus Christi by their enterprising spirit, have passed to the Great Beyond, leaving but one of the first generation to honor their memory, W. S. Rankin, a devout Presbyterian like his Presbyterian forebears.
Mrs. Lillie Rankin, although born at the very close of the Civil War, remembers many changes that have taken place in the home of her birth. She has seen Corpus Christi grow from a distracted and disorganized village, under federal jurisdiction. She has watched it grow rapidly from that catastrophe, and of a still greater one, when the yellow fever scourge took her late husband’s father. This last affliction swept away many of the pioneer pillars of society and business, but again the sacred-named village emerged from its calamity, and today Mrs. Rankin lives in a city with every modern improvement, with its magnificent churches, its splendid education institutions, its beautiful parks and playgrounds, its historical monuments, its World War Gold Star military record memorial, its modern department stores, its large industrial plants, its natural gas in abundance, its scores of oil wells at its very door, and above all its loyal descendants of Texas pioneers, who like their ancestors are building for future generations.
Mrs. Rankin, like other American War Mothers, hung a service flag in the window for her son, Harold, who joined in the service of his country to make the world safe for future humanity and to save the youth of every land, both men and women, from the holocaust of another world war.
The World War was, as are all wars, a young man’s war, but in the last great war, woman’s share was everywhere that service was needed – on the battlefield, in the Red Cross, in the motor corps, in the hospitals at home and abroad, in the surgeon general’s department, army nursing and training the nurses for foreign service, in dietetics, training the overseas physicians’ units, the proper food for the wounded and the sick.
"And in the front rank of those who rolled bandages, made pajamas and knitted sweaters and socks for all sons in service, were the mothers of the boys over there."
As the American War Mother’s service flag floated from her window a "New Glory" was born on American soil. – Ref. Times, June 16, 1936.
Source:
De Garmo, Mrs. Frank. Pathfinders of Texas, 1836-1846. Austin: Press of Von Boeckmann-Jones, Co., 1951.
Transcription by: Rosa G. Gonzales