Settlement in the Anderson area began by 1818 when James Anderson established a home about a mile south of the site, and the earliest permanent settlement grew around 1825 on Anderson Creek about a mile north, known as Anderson Creek, Anderson, and later Old Anderson. Booker Foster came from Virginia in 1825 and in 1835 built a home and water mill on Anderson Creek near the bridge on CR 93, later moving the mill one-quarter mile down the creek; other mills included Moses Ingram's at Ingram Hollow, and in 1880 Richard and Jess Williams built the first cotton gin at the original Foster Mill site. The Anderson Creek Post Office was established in 1860 with A.D. Ray as postmaster, and the community's first church, Hurricane Springs Primitive Baptist, began as a brush arbor dating to the 1800s near Anderson Cemetery, one of Lauderdale County's oldest cemeteries, with graves as early as 1841. In February 1926, Old Anderson was destroyed by fire and rebuilt at the present location, where the Farmers Bank, built that same year, helped spur the town's growth to more than 40 businesses by 1950; Anderson was incorporated in 1973 with W.S. Turpen as mayor. The town also honors veterans, including 77 men from north of here who in 1862 formed former Company H, 26th Alabama Volunteer, C.S.A., under Captain John Haney; after Haney's death, A.D. Ray was elected captain and served until the unit surrendered with General Joseph E. Johnston in North Carolina on April 24, 1865. In 1910 the first school, Howard, was built in Old Anderson for students from Hammond and Union Schools, followed by a multi-purpose frame school building in 1913 and, after a 1921 donation from the Hammond and Bayles estate, a six-room elementary school on six acres northeast of the site. From 1925 to 1937, Powell JHS, New Georgia, and Union closed and their students transferred to Anderson; a junior high school was built in 1935 on Bayles estate land north of the elementary school, enrollment reached 500 with 19 teachers by 1940, a cafeteria was added in 1947, and in 1948 Dr. L.E. Bayles donated six acres for athletic fields. Because of declining enrollment, the junior high school closed in 2011 and the elementary school closed on May 29, 2014; on March 3, 2014, the site was dedicated as Anderson Veterans Park.