John W. Carey was born in 1805 in West Virginia [sic - Virginia] and came to Shelby County with his parents, Cephas and Jane Williamson Carey. Around 1833, he bought a thousand acres in Dinsmore Township, west of the present railroad in what is now the village of Anna. A contractor by trade, he built the Montgomery County Courthouse in Dayton, Ohio, in 1845 and in 1856 helped build the Dayton and Michigan Railroad that was to run through Anna. He was instrumental in building the railroad station there and established a post office in the station. He named it Carey's Station, but later changed it to Anna in honor of his daughter. Seeing the need for the railroad to bring lasting prosperity to Anna, he platted the village of Anna in 1858 as 16 lots east of the railroad; it was surveyed and recorded by John L. and Fletcher Thirkield, owners of that land. In Sidney, he built the Shelby County Jail, Carey's Hall on the corner of Poplar Street and Ohio Avenue, and contracted to build part of the old Big Four Railroad bridge. Anna was incorporated on September 3, 1878. Carey died in 1877 at 72 years of age and is buried in Graceland Cemetery, Sidney, Ohio, in an unmarked grave in the Thirkield plot.