After the Civil War, Joseph Daniel "Jody" Anderson, born in Georgia in 1867, came as a child to the Tampa/Sara Sota area when his father moved the family to Southern Florida. He became head of the Anderson family in 1884 and in 1886 moved them to southern Manatee County, where he homesteaded land in the Mystic River (Forked Creek) Valley. In 1890 he married Helen Alice Johnson of Sarasota; they had eleven children, eight of whom survived. Using only hand tools, Anderson turned Florida wilderness into productive farmland that yielded vegetables, sugar cane, and citrus, while in the Myakka/Pinedale area he raised cattle and swine. He and his brother Moses "Lee" prospered in ranching until the Range Law Act limited grazing rights. Farm produce, fruit, and cattle were moved by sleds and later wagons to Lemon Bay for transfer to draft boats and shipment to ships at Boca Grande; some wagons were rafted across the bay to Manasota Beach, where produce was ferried to Cuban smacks and later to American schooners. Anderson also pioneered commercial fishing in North Lemon Bay, where the Andersons used cotton and flax twine nets treated with lime solution, and maintained shore and beach storage at Manasota to salt, dry, and barrel fish. When run boats began bringing ice from Tampa, fresh fish and produce could also be shipped. Though a quiet family man who avoided publicity, Anderson served before Sarasota County was organized as deputy sheriff and game warden in the Pinedale/Manasota area. The Anderson family built the area's first school at Pinedale, where Jody served as a trustee, and he organized the first church there. He supported the creation of Sarasota County from Manatee County and in 1922 became the first elected county commissioner from District 4. After the death of his first wife, he married Mary Ethel Morgan and raised four more children. He died in 1939.