Born at Hermiston near Edinburgh in 1739. At the age of fifteen, his parents being dead he undertook the family farm at Monkshill. He attended Cullen's lectures on chemistry to improve his agricultural knowledge, and introduced what came to be known as the Scotch Plough. He was a man of liberal education; having studied chemistry at Edinburgh, under  Dr. Cullen.  He had published several essays on agriculture and, in  1780,  received  the degree of LL.D., from Aberdeen University. Twelve years before, in 1768 he had married Miss Margaret Seton, of Mounie, by whom he had thirteen children.  In 1788 he moved to Edinburgh where he wrote about the economics of the North Sea fisheries. He was a contributor to  the first edition of the Encyclopcedia Britannica, and wrote the first report on the Agriculture of  Aberdeenshire, published in 1794.

Ardent in temperament, independent in his style of thought, and very outspoken, he took the keenest possible interest in the agriculture and social life of the region; his ideas, to which he never hesitated to give vent in one form or another, being not infrequently in direct conflict with the established order of things, a circumstance which seems in no way to have disturbed his equanimity, marred his good humour, or cooled his enthusiasm. In 1790, he was the originator, conductor, and chief contributor to a well-known weekly publication called 'The Bee' or 'Literary Weekly Intelligencer' which continued until 1794, and in which agricultural, scientific, and other questions were discussed; and his separate publications, which include a great variety of subjects, from the construction of chimneys to the nature and formation of Peat Moss, form altogether a very long list. In 1797 he moved to Isleworth, England.  Dr. Anderson died 15 October at Westham, near London, in 1808.  DNB; NLS Impr Ind.