Background
David Lawrence Anderson was born on February 4, 1850 in Summerhill, South Carolina, United States, the son of J. H. and Mary Margaret (Adams) Anderson. His family was of some local prominence.
David Lawrence Anderson was born on February 4, 1850 in Summerhill, South Carolina, United States, the son of J. H. and Mary Margaret (Adams) Anderson. His family was of some local prominence.
When ready for higher education Anderson entered in September 1866 Washington College (now Washington and Lee), Virginia, in the days of the presidency of General Lee. After two years he withdrew.
Anderson served for a time as a bookkeeper in the office of the Atlanta Constitution, of which his father was a founder. This post, however, he soon relinquished in order to devote himself to the ministry. He rose in a few years to a presiding eldership in the North Georgia Conference of Southern Methodism.
While in charge of the work in his mountain area he heard the call to foreign service, applied to his Board of Missions, and was appointed to China. His first year there was spent in the Shanghai neighborhood. The next year (1884) he was appointed to Soochow, where he made his home, reared his family, and did his work as a missionary and educator. His application, regard for details, and orderliness indicated at once his administrative capacity. When in 1886 the China Mission Conference of his church was organized he was put in charge of the Soochow district. He succeeded well in this office and bore his full share of the burdens of the Conference.
When thoughtful Chinese realized through the disastrous war with Japan their need of new learning, Anderson responded to the unique opportunity by opening an Anglo-Chinese school in 1894. Although the Boxer uprising five years later interrupted the progress of the new venture, the ultimate result was the death of the old educational régime. In the very midst of the uprising, Anderson was planning for the new order. When in 1899 the Mission committed itself to a reorganization of its educational work, it fell to Anderson's lot to found the university of which he and others had dreamed.
Soochow University was formally opened in March 1901 under the presidency of Anderson and with the generous support of the Soochow gentry and the home church. Beginning in the old buildings of the Mission's Buffington Institute, the new establishment acquired new buildings almost immediately and projected literary, theological, and medical departments. For ten years Anderson gave himself heartily to his new work.
In February 1908 the school granted its first Bachelor of Arts degree. The following year there were three graduates in Arts and three in Medicine. By that time some 350 students were enrolled. The University continued to grow, and upon Anderson's death Doctor Allen's Shanghai Anglo-Chinese College was merged with it.
Owing to his late coming to China, Anderson never mastered spoken Chinese. He had marked success, however, in understanding the educational problems of the East and in dealing with his students and the Chinese community. Several times he represented the China Mission at General Conferences in America. His last visit to America was in 1910.
Upon his return to China in the fall he assumed unusually heavy burdens under which his health broke, and when pneumonia came upon him it took his life. He died on February 16, 1911, and was buried in China.
Anderson was a member of the Methodist Episcopal church.
On December 31, 1879, Anderson married Mary Garland Thomson of Huntsville, Alabama. He was the father of five children.
