111 East Orleans St. Jackson, TN
Circa unknown. 2-story red home
This is the childhood home of Monroe Dunaway Anderson (1873-1939) - “father of the Texas Medical Center” in Houston, TX. Anderson’s father was the first president of Jackson’s First National Bank. He became a banker, philanthropist and founding partner of Anderson, Clayton & Co., the world’s largest merchandiser of cotton in the mid-twentieth century.
Anderson started his career with another bank, then about 1904, he invested into partnership with his brother Frank Anderson and Frank’s brother-in-law Will Clayton to buy and sell cotton. He continued his banking career for another 4 years until 1907 when he moved to Houston to explore business opportunities and found them.
A 1900 hurricane had wiped out Galveston, TX as the top TX cotton port, and Houston was filling the void. In 1914, the Houston Ship Channel had been created to facilitate shipping in the area, and commerce boomed.
At schools across the South, he funded libraries, auditoriums and college buildings and on the Lambuth University campus in Jackson, TN - a planetarium.
In 1939, his estate was worth $19M and became the largest charitable fund created in Texas. In 1941, the Texas Legislature appropriated $500K to fund a cancer hospital and research center; M. D. Anderson Foundation agreed to match funds if the hospital were located in Houston at the Texas Medical Center (where Anderson had a relationship) and was named after M.D. Anderson. The agreement was made. Anderson never married and simply lived in a variety of downtown Houston hotels until the end of his life. When in treatment at the end of his life, he did purchase a home near the TX hospital for convenience.
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