ANDERSON, ROBERT GRAHAM (1830-1910)

ANDERSON, ROBERT GRAHAM, furniture maker; b. Douglastown, 22 Jun c1830, s/o George Skeen Keith Anderson and Margaret Creighton; m. 1856, Helen Norman, d/o John Norman, a native of Scotland; d. Newcastle, 10 Jun 1910.

Robert G. Anderson was one of a number of sons of a mast and block maker in the shipbuilding industry, and he followed his father's trade for a time. He was later employed with John Main, a cabinet maker at Rexton, N.B. He had returned to the Miramichi by 1871, when he was enumerated in the census as a turner, or lathe operator. In 1877 he and his son John Norman Anderson opened a furniture manufacturing and upholstering business in Newcastle under the name of R. G. Anderson & Son. In addition to household furnishings, they manufactured school desks and pews for churches. In 1893, during the renovation of the Methodist church in Newcastle, they supplied a pulpit and three gothic chairs, "made of quartered American oak, upholstered in crimson plush." In 1911 they were engaged to install new birch pews in St Agnes Church at Gray Rapids.

Anderson was not much involved in the affairs of the community, but he was "a prominent Orangeman." He and his wife, Helen Norman, had two sons and a daughter. After his death in 1910 the furniture making business was continued by the son who had been his partner for more than thirty years: J. Norman Anderson (1858-1941).