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Frugality and thrift, industry and integrity — these were the most prominent characteristics of Monroe Dunaway Anderson. To these may be added shrewdness and acquisitiveness, which made him wealthy beyond most men of his time. He was also friendly, humble, kind, humorous and a little bashful. Monroe Anderson was born June 29, 1873, in Jackson, Tenn., a small city 70 miles northeast of Memphis. His father was the first president of Jackson’s First National Bank, which he helped organize. His mother was the daughter of the Rev. William Monroe Dunaway, a Cumberland Presbyterian minister. His Scottish Presbyterian ancestors endowed him and his siblings with frugality and thrift; indeed, these qualities prevailed widely in a South devastated economically as well as physically by the recently ended Civil War. Monroe attended Jackson’s public schools and Southwestern Baptist University at Memphis before going to work in Jackson’s other bank, the Peoples’ National, where he learned the banking business thoroughly.