Joseph Reid Anderson (1813-1892) - Find a Grave Memorial

Civil War Confederate Brigadier General. He attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, graduating 4th in the class in 1836. Assigned as an officer in the 3rd United Stats Artillery, he was recognized for his engineering abilities and was assigned as an assistant engineer to the Engineer Bureau, Washington D.C. before being officially transferred to the Corps of Engineers in 1837. Deciding his engineering career would best be served outside the military he resigned his commission and accepted the position of assistant engineer of the State of Virginia. He was chief engineer of the Valley Turnpike Company and later with the Tredegar Iron Company in Richmond, Virginia which by 1860 was producing locomotives, boilers, cables, naval hardware and cannon. With the outbreak of the Civil War, he offered his services to the Confederacy and was commissioned a Brigadier General, PACS on September 3, 1861. He commanded Confederate forces at Wilmington, North Carolina and was in command of the 3rd Brigade in Brigadier General A.P. Hill’s newly formed Light Infantry Division in the 1862 Peninsular Campaign. In action at the Battles of Mechanicville, Gaines' Mill, and White Oak Swamp, he was seriously wounded on June 30, 1862. He resigned his commission in July 1862 and returned to run Tredegar Iron Company as supervisor until the end of the war. The ironworks remained under United States federal control until 1867, when he again assumed duties as supervisor of the Tredegar Iron Company.

Bio by: John "J-Cat" Griffith