Frank was born on the 10th of November, 1875, in Fort Abraham Lincoln, which is now North Dakota but was then the Dakota Territory. At the age of fifteen, his father died from complications of the wounds he received as a Union Army soldier in the Civil War. Frank then went to work with the Northern Pacific Railroad and later became a machinist. In 1894, Frank was nineteen years old and he enlisted in the National Guard and he deployed to the Philippines during his second enlistment. It was his actions as a Corporal on the 13th of May, 1899, with Young’s Scouts that would earn him and ten others to receive the Medal of Honor. The citation reads:

With 11 other scouts, without waiting for the supporting battalion to aid them or to get into a position to do so, charged over a distance of about 150 yards and completely routed about 300 of the enemy who were in line and in a position that could only be carried by a frontal attack.

Young’s Scouts was a select group of soldiers that was formed under William Henry Young from Vermont. Of the original twenty-five members, fourteen received the Medal of Honor which was the only award for valor at the time. Frank worked in the mining industry after the war and went on to graduate from Ripon College in 1906, having only a seventh grade education and a few months at Dakota Business College. He received his Medal of Honor on the 3rd of March, 1906 and went on to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to study Civil Engineering. He was the first person to be awarded a scholarship by that university and Frank became the chief engineer with the Utah Smelting Corporation in 1909.

Frank was commissioned as a Captain in 1918 with the Corps of Engineers and he transferred from Fort Dodge, Iowa to Fort Riley. He ended his time in service as a Major and he and his wife Mary had one son and one daughter: Franklin, who went on to serve in the US Army (reaching the rank of Lieutenant Colonel), fought in World War 2 and was a survivor of the Bataan Death March…which, ironically, took place in the Philippines where his father had fought forty-three years earlier. Marion served as a missionary to India. Frank LaFayette Anders died on the 23rd of January, 1966 at the age of 90 and at the time, he was the oldest living Medal of Honor recipient. He is buried with his wife and children in the Hillside Cemetery in Ripon, Wisconsin: Block 108 Western Addition, Lot SE ¼ 7-7E, Grave 5.