The beginning of fighting in the Philippines meant the end of Thomas Anderson’s command of the Vancouver Barracks. His transfer made him the first United States general to serve overseas. Born in Ohio, he attended law school in Cincinnati, practicing law in Ohio and Kentucky before the Civil War. He began the war as a second lieutenant in the cavalry and, following promotions at the Battle of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania, finished it as a lieutenant colonel.

Anderson went west with the Army after the Civil War. Before taking command of the Vancouver Barracks in 1886, he served in Texas for a dozen years, skirmishing against the Kiowa. The 50-year-old Anderson and his family lived in a barracks building once called Rufus Ingalls Hall and the NCO club. (The building partially burned in 1

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