Jacob Nelson Anderson was born in Denmark in 1867 and early in his life came to America. He obtained a Bachelor of Science degree from a Seventh-day Baptist college and entered the Seventh-day Adventist ministry in Wisconsin.
In 1896 he was married to Emma Thompson. J. N. Anderson was ordained as a Seventh-day Adventist minister in the year 1899, at thirty-two years of age, and received a Bachelor of Divinity degree from the University of Chicago. It was around the time in the Adventist Church that much interest was taking place over the spreading of the gospel to all the world. John Nevins Andrews had been the first Seventh-day Adventist missionary to go outside North America.
In April, 1901 the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists passed a recommendation advising that Jacob N. Anderson and wife, of Wisconsin, be invited to make China their field of labor. Emma's sister, Ida E. Thompson was under appointment to Brazil but upon learning that the Andersons were going to China, she requested to go with them.
It was on Christmas eve that the three missionaries left their home and began the trip to San Francisco, California. They were already booked to sail on the steamship “America Maru”, to Hong Kong, but did not arrive there until February 2, 1902.
It was just sunset when their ship sailed into Hong Kong harbor. Mrs. Anderson described their arrival in these words: “The ocean liner had scarcely swung taut on her cables when she was surrounded by a swarm of sailboats, houseboats, sampons, and junks, seemingly came up out of the sea. Staterooms, saloon, and deck were well-nigh cleared of passengers when we finally lowered ourselves and our hand luggage into a boat and were rowed ashore, not in China, but into Hong Kong, a small island belonging to Great Britain, lying just off the southeast coast of China.”
Six men from the Steamship “Terrible,” who had been studying with Abram La Rue, were baptized soon after the Andersons' arrival. And five or six joined the church later that year. This became the nucleus of the first Seventh-day Adventist church in Hong Kong. Their first task was finding a teacher who would help them learn the Chinese language. They spent the first two years in preparation.
In 1903 Elder and Mrs. Anderson were invited to go to Honan to meet Eric Pilquist, a man who worked with the British and Foreign Bible Society and had accepted the Adventist beliefs while on his furlough and had offered his services to the church.
Elder Spicer read a letter, which he received from Eloka Anderson, to the General Conference session in Oakland, telling about his trip. How Elder Anderson had held the first baptism in China of six Chinese people on February 14, 1903 in Sinyang and had organized the first Seventh-day Adventist church with eight members. At this time four physicians and two nurses joined Elder Pilquist in the work inside North China. These were Drs. Harry and Maude Miller and Dr. A. C. and Bertha Selmon, and Charlotte Simpson and Carrie Erickson.
Mr. Pilquist was ordained to the gospel ministry in November of 1903. Brother and Mrs. Edwin H. Wilbur arrived in Hong Kong at the close of October, 1902 and were the first American Seventh-day Adventist workers to settle inside China at Canton in Kwangtung Province. Thus at the close of 1903 there were 12 missionaries in China.
Fourteen months after arriving in Hong Kong, the Andersons finally moved up to Canton. Mrs. Anderson described their home: “The building itself was a grey-brick structure of two stories. The dwelling was above the lower floor being intended for a chapel. But the chapel's street door was shut, and padlocked with a heavy iron clasp and staple. How that empty room with its closed door spurred us on to diligent study!
“At the rear, connected with our house as part of the premises stands the 'old chapel.' This is the spot to which Hung Siau Tsuen came for instructions in the Bible after those remarkable visions in which he believed himself to have been called to destroy idol worship out of China. From a small beginning of reform in his own family, this effort developed into the Taiping Rebellion. It was of interest to us that, following only the Scriptures as their guide, the Taipins adopted the “Ten Heavenly Rules” as the moral standard of conduct, observing the Seventh-day as the day of worship and of praise to God.' Our first small training school for young men was opened in the old chapel where the Taiping leader had been taught.”
The first institution was opened in the spring of 1904 by Miss Ida Thompson, for girls and was called the Bethel School in honor of Bethel Academy in the Wisconsin Conference which supported the school work in Canton for a number of years.
In the spring of 1906 J .N. Anderson ordained the first Chinese Seventh-day Adventist worker, Elder N. P. Keh, a minister in the Amoy, Fukien Province. Other national workers soon joined the missionaries to carry on the work of God.
Because of failing health, the Andersons had to return to America in 1909. The next year Elder Anderson was able to teach Bible at the Washington Foreign Mission Seminary, now Columbia Union College, from 1910 – 1915 and Greek and classes in missions from 1925 – 1928. He also taught 18 years at Union College, Lincoln, Nebraska.
His first wife, Emma, died in 1925 and two years later he married Mrs. Daisy B. Shrader, who died in 1941. And in 1945 Mrs. Louise Stahnke became his wife.
He and many like him lit the torch in China for others to carry until the work is finished in that Great Country.