Robert Anderson was born on June 14, 1805 in Jefferson County, Kentucky at his family's plantation, Soldier's Retreat. After graduating from West Point in 1825, Anderson served in the Black Hawk War (1832), the Seminole War (1837-38), and the Mexican War (1846-48). In 1860, when South Carolina seceded from the Union, Anderson was sent to Charleston to command Fort Sumter and the other forts in the harbor. He and his seventy men held out for nearly four months without any supply shipments from the North. Upon receiving the news that the Lincoln administration was sending a shipload of provisions, the Confederates under General P.G.T. Beauregard demanded that Anderson surrender. He refused and on April 12, 1861, Confederate artillery began bombarding Fort Sumter. Anderson held his position for thirty-four hours but he surrendered to Beauregard once his food supplies were depleted. The command was evacuated by ship to New York, where they were heralded as war heroes. Subsequently, Anderson was commissioned a brigadier general and was placed in charge of recruiting Union troops in Kentucky until ill health forced him to retire from active duty in October 1861. On October 26, 1871 Anderson died in Nice, France and was buried at West Point.

George H. Yater, "Robert Anderson," in John E. Kleber, ed., The Kentucky Encyclopedia (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1992), 21.