University of Massachusetts Amherst - Index Yearbook (Amherst, MA)

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Dedication To him whom we honored as a soldier, respected as an instructor, and esteemed as a sincere friend : Major John Anderson, U. S. A., this book is respectfully dedicated by the Class of 1907

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MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE Major John Anderson UNITED STATES ARMY l ' EW years ago I was asked by one of our great newspapers to give it my definition of true patriotism. I wrote to the paper as follows: I put the question to a Grand Army comrade of mine, and his answer was: ' To be willing to give all you have, all that you are, and all that you expect to be, for the sake of your country. ' This man served with distinguished gallantry as a volunteer officer in the War of the Rebellion, devoted the next thirty years of his life to active dut} ' in the regular army, and upon his retirement settled down in a Massachusetts town, not to rust, like an old fieldpiece, but to become the useful and influential citizen which his service, experi- ence and intelligence fit him to be, I regard him as a true patriot, and am glad to adopt his definition of true patriotism. The man to whom I referred was Major (then Captain) John Anderson, and it is with genuine pleasure that I respond to the request of the editor of the Index for a brief sketch of his life. He was bom in Monson, Massachusetts, sixty-five years ago. If, how- ever, it be true that we live in deeds, not years, he is as old as Methuselah. His boyhood and youth were like that of any other hearty, healthy country boy, full of pranks which need not be recounted here. I think he has always, even as a member of a college faculty, sympathized openly or secretly with good-natured mischief makers. His military record shows that at the age of twenty-two he enlisted as a p)rivate in the First Michigan Sharpshooters, January 5, 1863, and served until February 9, 1864. On February i, 1864, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the 5 7th Massachusetts Infantry, one of the most famous of the fighting regiments of the Civil War. In the battle of Petersburg crater, July 30, 1865, he received a severe shell wound, and was discharged for disability, January