submitted by Albert Stevens McLean
Here William or “Billy” grew into manhood and in 1806 married Martha Elkins, born September 8, 1787 in Washington County, NC (now Unicoi Co., Tenn.) daughter of Gabriel and Stacy (Dillard) Elkins.
William Anderson inherited his father’s place on Paint Fork and lived there until 1817 when he purchased his brother George’s lands on Big Ivy River. This farm was adjoining present-day Barnardsville, NC, to the west and extending to the west of Whittemore Branch and to the north of Big Ivy River. His home, a large two-story log house, stood 300 yards northeast of the confluence of Whittemore Branch and Big Ivy, upon a rise overlooking the present Town of Barnardsville, not then in existence.
In 1852 “Billy” Anderson donated the land and other advancements for the erection of a church – “for the purpose and no other, for a place of public worship for all Christian denominations of people with the conditions that the Baptist have the preference of their set or monthly days of worship and also that the Protestants of the Methodists denomination have their set days of worship without molestation.”
William Anderson was a successful farmer and stock raiser and his home was always open to his friends. Many religious, social and civic meetings were held there.
He died in July 1856 and his wife, Martha, died in 1877. They are buried in a small family cemetery on the southwest corner of his home farm, about fifty yards east of the old church property on the Whittemore Branch.
William and Martha (Elkins) were the parents of:
Stacy Eliza Anderson, b. 1808, married Edmund Deweese and moved to Cherokee County, NC;
William Anderson Jr., drowned in Big Ivy;
Mary Pauline Anderson, b. 1813, married Thomas Foster Dillingham;
Nancy Anderson, born January 15, 1813, married William Gardner of Yancey Co., NC, on March 22, 1832.
Colonel Albert Galliton Anderson, born June 3, 1817;
Darkus (Dorcas) Anderson, born February 15, 1820, died May 11, 1898, married George E. Wilson (September 7, 1807 – February 6, 1887).
Martha Anderson, born 1825, married Benjamin F. West, (b. 1820);
Catherine Eliza Anderson, born November 24, 1829, married April 21, 1853 to Garrett Deweese Carter. He was born March 9, 1823, and killed in the Battle of Petersburg, VA, on September 29, 1864. She married secondly, Benjamin F. West, widower of her sister Martha.
Sarah Anderson married John Ramsey, and secondly on October 25, 1852, Major John Daugherty, and thirdly, Thomas F. Dillingham;
Susan Anderson married Rev. Joseph Eller.
“Old Buncombe County Heritage – North Carolina, Vol. 1”
article article #212, p. 139