Civil War Digital Scrapbook
Chase Hopkins
August 5, 1860
Hi, I’m Robert Anderson and today is my birthday. I’m 14 years old and I live in Portland, Maine with my parents and my 4 siblings. My father is 39, was born in London, England and is a pastor at Chestnut Street Methodist Church. My mother works hard raising 5 children. My brother James is 19, Louis is 15 and my sister Bridgette is 13 and Annabelle is 10. My brothers and I work at the Portland Daily Advertiser in the print room and my sisters go to school. We all live in a small house on a small farm where we grow our own crops We all have to help and do chores around the house and farm.
I don’t have a lot of freetime, but when I do I like to read books and go fishing. Since my father is a pastor, we go to church a lot. I guess you could say he is an abolitionist because he believes that slavery is wrong. He goes to anti-slavery meetings and sometimes in his sermons he talks about ending slavery. He believes that God wants us to treat everyone with respect. As a matter of fact, there was a picture of my dad’s church in an article recently in the Portland Daily Advertiser. The article talked about the anti-slavery meetings he’s been leading there. Here’s a clipping from the article.