If Southwest Florida history were a forest, you couldn't throw a rock and not hit a Hendry, so thick do the branches and scions of that family's deep-rooted tree grow.

It was planted here by Francis Asbury Hendry, the Georgia-born son of a cattleman who came to this state in 1851, when he was 19, then set about becoming one of its most influential citizens.

Not the least of the man's accomplishments was siring 11 children, eight of whom survived to adulthood and went on to produce a goodly number of grandchildren for the captain.

The Hendry family saga has all the earmarks of a sweeping epic: gritty pioneers, maverick lawmen and county-building visionaries soldiering on through war and peace, famine and feast. Many in the clan make their living and raise their children no more than an hour's drive on today's roads from their ancestor's homestead.

If not the first family of Fort Myers, the Hendrys are indisputably a family of firsts: They owned the first bathtub, were among the first 20 telephone subscribers, owned the first girl's bicycle. Tillie Foxworthy, one of the captain's granddaughters, became the first woman in town to own a car.

These days, in addition to Hendrys aplenty, the captain's blood runs in the veins of many others bearing locally well-known surnames: Carlton, English, Thompson, Kelly, Alderman, Foster and Tatum.

Every year, as they have for three decades, Hendry family members gather for a picnic the first Saturday after Easter. It's usually set on the banks of the Orange River, at the farm of the captain's great-grandson, Lloyd G. Hendry. Most years, a few hundred people come, mainly from Florida, but they've also shown up from as far away as the Philippines and Scotland.

Springtime in Buckingham being what it is, the reunions are sunny, more often than not, the live oaks newly leafed out and the river itself slow and clear, with a color that runs between palmetto honey and stiff tea, just warm enough for the kids to swim in.

After a winding, two-track drive through mossy woods, visitors park in a grassy pasture and walk to the riverfront picnic grounds, where they find their kin cuddling babies, gossiping, reminiscing and eating. There's not a beer or a cigarette in sight; the captain was a good Methodist and his party is strictly no alcohol (plus, it'd be pretty foolish to smoke this deep in the dry-season woods).

They swap tales, phone numbers and e-mail addresses. Stretched along bulletin-board panels set up under the oak are several feet of family tree, clippings, photos and assorted biographies of the man who started it all: Francis Asbury Hendry.

Born in Thomas County, Ga., Francis (who was better known by his nickname, Berry) came to Florida with his family when he was a teen-ager. They were quite literally in search of greener pastures for their cattle, and settled on the banks of the Alafia River, near Tampa, where they built a log cabin. Hendry's sister, Oregon Hendry Blount, described those times in her memoir: "[We] raised our own corn and ground it by hand into grits and into meal for bread. Baked sweet potatoes were a staple dish, but sweet-potato custard was a luxury for great occasions." Pulverized dark-roasted field corn served as coffee, but venison was so plentiful "the family seldom ate it, but fed it to the dogs."

When Hendry was 19, a year after his father died, he headed south with his new wife, Ardeline, and a small herd of cattle. They eventually settled along the Caloosahatchee River in what is now Lee County.

As a young man, Hendry fought in the Seminole War and also in the Civil War for the Southern cause. Later, he built a stately home in what is now downtown Fort Myers.

Writes Karl Grismer in The Story of Fort Myers (with research help from Sara Nell Gran, herself a Hendry descendant), "Captain Hendry's herds dominated the open range south of the river and he became widely known as the cattle king of south Florida. In one year during the 1870s, he shipped 12,896 head from Punta Rassa [in south Fort Myers]. In 1880, he was reported to be the owner of 50,000 head."

Always looking to improve his fortune, Hendry imported purebred Jerseys as well as high-grade Cuban grass for their pastures. A staunch advocate for Everglades drainage and water management, he helped get the Caloosahatchee River connected to Lake Okeechobee with a canal.

Though no one who remembers Hendry is still alive, Gran says he was enough talked about for her to have a pretty good idea of his character. In a word: imposing.

"He didn't say much, but when he did, people listened," she says. "He had a lot of presence, and I think he was just a naturally commanding man."

Though he opposed secession, Hendry cast his lot with the Confederacy, writes historian Spessard Stone (the 1860 U.S. Census slave schedule reports that Hendry owned eight slaves).

"When the war between the states was threatening . . . he at once enlisted in the cause of the Confederacy, was actively engaged for three years in the commissary department of Florida, furnishing large herds of cattle to the armies in Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama. In 1863 he organized a cavalry company and was assigned to Col. J. C. Munnerlyn's battalion, Confederate states army," according to an 1893 story in the Florida Times-Union.

In February 1865, Hendry and about 130 of his men joined Maj. William Footman's Cow Cavalry and participated in the Battle of Fort Myers. Hendry eventually surrendered in Tampa at the end of the war. In 1887, when new counties were being created, he persuaded the legislature to name Lee County after one of his heroes, Gen. Robert E. Lee.

A lifelong Democrat, Hendry served two terms as state senator from District 24 and six as representative to the state legislature. He also was one of the first commissioners of Lee County. In the late 1880s, Hendry and his wife sold their Fort Myers home to their son, Louis, and moved to what is now Hendry County, where the captain helped plan the town of LaBelle. He named it for his daughters, Laura and Belle.

Though he'd fought the Seminoles as a young man, Hendry later developed deep friendships with some of the Indians. "They held him in such high esteem," writes Grismer, "that when he was dying, chief Billy Conapachee and his brother, Billy Fuel, walked 60 miles from deep in the Glades to see him before he passed away." That happened in 1917, when Hendry was 83. In 1923, the Florida legislature created a new county, the state's 63rd, gave it his name and established LaBelle as the county seat.

Reported The Tampa Tribune: "Captain Hendry was a man of genial temperament, naturally cultivated, gifted with the power of making friends and keeping them, few men in the state were so widely known, liked and trusted."

That genial temperament was obviously inherited by most of those who flock to the family reunions; laughter is the soundtrack of the day: sometimes quiet, sometimes raucous, but almost always present.

Though it used to be a strictly potluck affair, folding tables groaning with wild hog, swamp cabbage, chicken and dumplings, scripture cake and more, the dinner portion of the feast has been catered the last two years-a nod to modern expedience, perhaps. But the dessert table remains strictly a family affair. Pink guava pie, dark gingerbread, brownies, cookies and lemon cake are just a few of the delectables Hendry relatives carry into the woods to share.

The afternoon holds other kinds of sweetness as well: toddlers chasing butterflies, teens flinging themselves from a rope swing into the river below, and a pair of just-past-teenagers, one with unmistakable Hendry eyes, strolling into the woods a bit, until they reach a low, wide log, velveted with moss.

There, in a smilax and grapevine bower, the young couple whispers and nuzzles, visibly in thrall to springtime and each other-and, perhaps, in service to the next generation of Hendrys.