ANDERSON, JAMES HENRY ADDISON (1876-1937)

ANDERSON, JAMES HENRY ADDISON, Presbyterian minister, Chatham, 1918-25; b. St Peter's Bay, P.E.I., 28 Jan 1876, s/o Horatio Anderson and Margaret Cameron; m. Flora Carson, of St Martins, N.B.; d. Middle Musquodoboit, N.S., 12 Dec 1937.

J. H. Addison Anderson was educated at Prince of Wales College and Dalhousie University (BA 1899) and trained for the ministry at the Presbyterian College in Halifax (grad. 1902, BD 1907). He later took an STM degree from the Union Theological Seminary in New York and was granted an honorary DD by Pine Hill Divinity Hall (1936). His colleagues perceived him to be a man of brilliant scholarly attainments, and he was said to have used his "literary and intellectual gifts" to make "valuable contributions to many departments of the Church's work." He was also known to the public through articles on religious and social reform which he published in the newspapers.

Anderson had churches in Florenceville and Saint John before he was called to Chatham in 1918. He was the last pastor of St John's Presbyterian Church in Chatham (1918-21) and the only minister of the United Church of St Andrew's and St John's (1921-25), after the two Presbyterian congregations in the town, representing the 'Kirk' and 'Free' traditions respectively, became one. This took place ninety years after they had gone their separate ways and just four years before the formation of the United Church of Canada. Anderson was an ardent and articulate proponent of church union and a skillful moderator of these developments.

After union, Anderson served the United Church in Nova Scotia. He had been seven years at Upper Musquodoboit when he died suddenly in 1937, at age sixty-one. He left his wife, Flora Carson, and three daughters.