Source.—A Memoir by his Grand-daughter, Mrs. Sophia Rowe, in the Transactions for 1899 of The United Empire Loyalists' Association of Ontario.

The late Captain Samuel Anderson was born of Irish parents near Boston on 4th of May, 1736. He was a lawyer in good practice and married Miss Prudentia Deliverance Butts of Boston, who was born 1743 and died 1824. Samuel Anderson went to the West Indies early in life for the benefit of his health. On his return he joined the King's forces, probably as one of the contingent furnished by the New England Provinces after the breaking out of the war with France in 1756. He served under General Abercrombie in 1758, and under General Amherst in 1759-60-61.... After the close of the war, he settled on a farm near Boston, where he resided until the breaking out of the rebellion in 1775. He was offered a company in the Continental Service, which he refused. Some time after, he was offered command of a regiment in the same service, which he also refused. This caused him to be looked upon as a King's Man and led to an attempt on the part of some of his neighbours to convert him from the error of his ways by one or other of the gentle means of carting, flogging, or tar-and-feathering then in vogue amongst the revolutionary party. Five or six of them started out to try the experiment; they found him on his farm splitting rails; he politely asked them their business, and, on being told they had come to teach him a lesson, he invited them to "come and try." As he was a very large and powerful man, they looked at him, then at the axe in his hand, and moved off, evidently considering "discretion the better part of valour." Several attempts were made to arrest him, and he was at one time secreted on his own property, when a party of Continentals billeted themselves at his house. The sergeant read a proclamation offering a reward of five hundred pounds for the body of Samuel Anderson dead or alive, after which the party conversed in French, not thinking they would be understood by Mrs. Anderson; but the brave woman, without betraying the slightest fear or knowledge of what they talked of, heard all they purposed doing to her husband, should he be found. She directed her servants to prepare food and beds for all, had their horses stabled and fed, then, waiting till all was quiet, went in the dark to her husband and bade him fly for his life.

However, he with many other loyalists were captured and confined in Litchfield jail, where they suffered all but death until the beginning of 1777, when, having been told that all the prisoners were to be shot the next day, Anderson wrenched the bars from a window, and with his companions escaped to Canada, where he was appointed a Captain in the 1st Battalion of Sir John Johnston's corps, the King's Royal Regiment of New York. When General Burgoyne was preparing to advance from Ticonderoga, Captain Anderson was placed at the head of the workmen who were employed in making the roads through the forest from the head of Lake Champlain towards Fort Edward. He served in the battalion of the Royal Yorkers until they were disbanded in the spring of 1784. From the time of his imprisonment in Litchfield jail, his wife saw nothing of him until late in 1778, when, after suffering terribly from the cruelty of the Continentals, she abandoned all her property, paid the Yankee Governor 2s. 6d. for a pass, and with her family made her way to Sorel, where her husband was then stationed with his company of the Royal Yorkers, where they remained till the spring of 1783, when he with his two elder sons who had served under him were put on half pay when peace was declared; and at the reduction of the army, Anderson, with his family and the men of his company, received their allotment of lands in Cornwall, then a wilderness, the nearest settlement being Montreal distant 68 miles, and Kingston 105 miles. They came up the St. Lawrence by batteaux, and lived for some time under shelter of cedar boughs, until able to erect log houses for themselves. A short time after their arrival the "Dark Sunday" occurred, when at mid-day total darkness fell upon all the land, and continued for about two hours. The rain came down in torrents, flooding their temporary dwelling, causing great discomfort, while the thunder and lightning were terrific. In those days there were no merchants, no baker or butcher shops, no medical men, no ministers to console the sick or dying or bury the dead, and no means of instruction for the young. The Loyalists were generally poor, having sacrificed their property to their politics, and were obliged to work very hard. All was bush, hard labour and pinching privation for the present and long toil for the rising generation. The only mail in the early settlement of West Canada between Kingston and Montreal was in the winter carried three times by an old French Canadian, Jacques Morriseau, who travelled the whole distance on snow shoes. His food was sea biscuit and fat pork which he ate and enjoyed sitting on a snow bank, and would afterwards puff away dull care in clouds of smoke curling from his old clay pipe, the stem of which was just long enough to keep the burning punk with which he lit it about two inches from his nose. From Lachine to Cornwall, he was obliged to sleep out of doors three nights—the settlers were then so few and far between, he could not always reach a house—and the only bed he had on these occasions was of green boughs under him and a blanket to cover him. He always rested a night going either way under Captain Anderson's roof. In 1785, Captain Anderson was appointed a magistrate ... and drew half pay as a Captain until his death, which occurred in June, 1836 (born 1736), not from any bodily ailment, but accidentally falling, his hip joint was broken, and from his great age the bones would not unite.