George Anderson (accountant-general)
George Anderson (November 1760- 30 April 1796) was the English accountant-general to the Board of Control. Biography He was born at Weston, Buckinghamshire, in November 1760. His parents were in no way distinguished from the peasant class to which they belonged, and he himself worked as a day labourer until near the close of his seventeenth year. He had, however, been early smitten with a passion for mathematical studies, and in 1777 he sent to the ‘London Magazine’ solutions of some problems which had appeared in its pages. His letter attracted the notice of a gentleman of scientific acquirements from the neighbourhood of Weston, named Bonnycastle, who sought out the writer, and found him threshing in a barn, the walls of which were covered with triangles and parallelograms. The incident caused some local sensation, and it was felt that such uncommon talents should not remain without cultivation. Mr. King, vicar of Whitchurch, accordingly took charge of his education, and, after some preliminary instruction at a grammar school, sent him to Wadham College, Oxford, where he took the degree of M.A. in 1784. His patron destined him for the clerical profession; but after he had taken deacon's orders, he found that