Born: About 1900 in Civil District 8, Hardin County, Tennessee
Died: September 19, 1998 in Denver, Colorado
Bio: Educator, author and lecturer Daisy Graham Anderson is best known for being one of the last surviving widows of the American Civil War, having been married to a former slave and U.S. Colored Regiment soldier and Union veteran. She moved to Arkansas around 1918, settling in Forrest City, and became a rural school teacher.
Daisy Anderson wrote a personal account of her husband’s life titled From Slavery to Affluence: Memoirs of Robert Anderson, Ex-Slave. It was privately published in 1927 and reissued in 1988. She would also take up one of her husband’s favorite activities — attending Grand Army of the Republic reunions and other Civil War–related events. In 1997, Union widow Daisy Anderson and Confederate widow Alberta Martin would extend their hands toward one another at the wall of “Pickett’s Charge” in Gettysburg National Military Park, 134 years after that bloody struggle.
In 1998, Anderson was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in Little Rock.
You can learn more about the life of Daisy Graham Anderson at the Encyclopedia of Arkansas.