413 Anderson

The lots of Charles and Julia Anderson as well as William Pearl are now (2013) the parking lot for Lucille’s Memorial Chapel funeral home.

5th USCT marches in Sandusky, Ohio. November, 1863.

Living at 413 South Adams was Charles and Julia Anderson. The Andersons were a mixed couple; Julia was a white woman and Charles a black man, or in some records, a ‘mulatto.’ Charles Anderson was born in Ohio around 1848. In 1850 he is living with his parents, William and Lydia and his grandparents, all born in Virginia, in Morgan Township, Gallia County Ohio. Morgan Township was home to the Lambert Land Settlement of free and emancipated blacks.

As a teenager, Charles joined Company E of the 5th USCT in Zainesville, Ohio. The 5th saw a lot of fighting in the war and Charles was wounded twice. In July, 1864 at the Battle of the Crater during the Siege of Petersburg he was hit with shrapnel in the face and spent months in the hospital recovering. Returning to the field, Anderson was wounded again in February, 1865. In one of the final battles of the war, at Wilmington, North Carolina, Anderson lost two fingers on his right hand to a musket ball.

Charles Anderson’s Civil War Service Records.

Wounded at the Crater.

Read Charles Anderson’s military records.

Around 1870, Charles married Julia, a white woman from Marion, Ohio born in 1846. They are living in Ypsilanti, probably on Adams Street, by 1880. Their son Fred, born in 1876, was well-known as a singer and musician, eventually moving to Detroit and joining the orchestra and even traveling to London, England. Charles became a janitor at the Ypsilanti Savings Bank and died in October, 1915.

October 11, 1915. Ypsilanti Daily Press.

Julia, who was employed doing ‘general housework’, moved to Detroit after the death of Charles. There she lived with her son Fred and his wife at 718 Beaubien until her death in 1920.

Fred Anderson. January, 1893. Plaindealer.

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December 1, 1915. Ypsilanti Daily Press.

A promotion for Fred Anderson’s benefit recital at Brown AME on the occasion of his return to America to deal with the death of his father, Charles.