Anderson was probably a Virginian from
Amelia County. He may have initially been involved in
tobacco production and shipment, but soon added slave trading as an additional source of income. In 1825 he was able to purchase 100 acres near what is now Walton Pike and
Kentucky Route 9 in Mason County, Kentucky. Here he built or converted a log-hewn building for use as a
slave jail, where he could sequester slaves before taking them down to the
Dover, Kentucky boat landing and shipping them south by pole-guided flatboat, or later steamboat, to the cotton kingdom markets of Natchez and New Orleans. He was fronted tens of thousands of dollars for slave speculation by his neighbor Thomas Marshall III, and his neighbor's first cousin, Chief Justice
John Marshall. He also began investing in thoroughbred race horses during the 1820s. In 1825 he was listed as a witness in a court case in
Natchez, Mississippi involving a Kentucky slave trader named
Edward Stone and a male slave who had gotten into a fight. The following year, Stone and his nephew Howard Stone and three other men would be killed on the
Ohio River by slaves they were transporting south to the cotton kingdom. In 1828 he was accused of having wrongfully resold a pair of young enslaved sisters, Malala, 13, and Marinda, 11, but Anderson denied the charges. In 1833, Anderson was seemingly involved in the establishment of the
Forks of the Road slave market outside
Natchez, Mississippi. For the year 1833 he paid $113.75 in taxes for slave sales made in Natchez, Adams County, Mississippi. In the summer of 1833, John W. Anderson advertised heavily for the recovery of four slaves who had escaped him. Carter, Emanuel, Hannah, and Caroline were all in their 20s, and Carter and Emanuel wore suits made of green cord. In 1836, J. W. Anderson was nominated and elected as a
Whig to represent
Mason County in the Kentucky General Assembly. Anderson died a month after the election and never served in the legislature. == Slave jail ==