Jordan* Anderson (circa 1825-1907) was born into slavery in Tennessee and owned by a man about two years older than him, Colonel Patrick Henry Anderson (1823-1867). After gaining his freedom in 1864, Jordan Anderson moved to Ohio with his wife and at least three children. Nearly four months after the end of the Civil War, Anderson dictated a letter to his abolitionist employer, Valentine Winters. The letter was a response to Jordan Anderson’s former master, who had requested that Anderson and his family return to Tennessee to work on the plantation. In addition to sending this letter, Winters submitted it to the Cincinnati Commercial, a newspaper with a Republican, anti-slavery leaning. The published letter caused an immediate sensation, and then came back into the public’s attention in 2012, when the people and places mentioned in it were corroborated by the Associated Press and black history scholars. 

*sometimes spelled “Jourdan”