John Alexander Anderson

John Alexander Anderson (* June 26, 1834 in Pigeon Creek, Washington County, Pennsylvania, † May 18 1892 in Liverpool, England ) was an American politician. Between 1879 and 1891 he represented the state of Kansas in the U.S. House of Representatives. He also was president of the Kansas State University.

Career

John Anderson attended both public and private schools. Until 1853 he studied at the Miami University in Oxford ( Ohio). In 1857 he was ordained as a priest presbyteranischer. Then he started in Stockton (California ) to work in this profession. In 1860 he was curator of the state mental hospital of California. In 1862 he was chaplain in a volunteer regiment in California. From 1863 to 1865 he represented the federal health authority also in California.

In 1868, Anderson moved to Junction City, Kansas, where he built the first Presbyterian church in the city. He was also spent five years as a pastor. Between 1872 and 1873 he was part of the governing body of the University of Kansas. From 1873 to 1879 he was president of the Kansas State Agricultural College, which is better known under the name of Kansas State University.

Anderson was a member of the Republican Party. In the congressional elections of 1878 he was in the first district of Kansas in the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington DC chosen, where he became the successor of William A. Phillips on March 4, 1879. In the following years he was re-elected each. Since the elections of 1884 he represented as the successor to Edmund Morrill the fifth electoral district of his state. Until March 3, 1891, he was able to complete in Congress six legislative periods.

For the elections of 1890 Anderson was not re-nominated by his party. In March 1891 he was appointed American consul in Cairo. On the way back to the United States he died in May 1892, at Liverpool, England. He was buried in Junction City.