Û Byerly
Family Photos
Elizabeth & Lillian Byerly have submitted this article and photos of the Byerly and related families. The article appeared in The Des Moines Register Sunday Magazine, circa 1920-1925. Click on any photo for a larger view.
Elizabeth & Lillian Byerly have submitted this article and photos of the Byerly and related families. The article appeared in The Des Moines Register Sunday Magazine, circa 1920-1925. Click on any photo for a larger view.
 Michael Byerly 1818-1896 Son of Francis M & Catherine Cream Byerly. Husband of Elizabeth Stone Jeffries Byerly. |
 Elizabeth Stone Jeffries 1815-1900 Wife of Michael Byerly. Daughter of Bryant Jeffries & Mary (Nancy) Dulin Jeffries |
 John Wesley Byerly 1845-1925 Son of Michael & Elizabeth Byerly |
 Milton Byerly 1843/44-1920 & wife, Maria Johnson Byerly 1863-1913 Son of Michael & Elizabeth Byerly |
In 1846, from this Ohio Valley where Washington built his first fort,
there came to eastern Iowa a man named Francis Byerly, and with him
seven sons and daughters. A few years later, his nephews Andrew, Peter,
and John came to the same place. They settled in Jones County at a place
they called New Port, a few miles from where Anamosa now is. All of
these original settlers are now dead, Andrew J., who was a sheriff of
Jones County in the pioneer days, being the last to die, Dec. 29, 1919.
The aged wife of Peter still lives in Jefferson, Iowa, with her
children.
Only a few of the grandchildren of Francis still live,
one being Hon. Wm. M. Byerly of Anamosa, a prominent Democratic
politician and former member of the Iowa Legislature.
A. E.
(Earl) Byerly and his sister (Eva) were born at Anamosa, grandchildren
of Andrew J., and received their college education in Des Moines. The
descendants of these pioneers now number four hundred or more in the
State of Iowa, and there are no doubt many others in the state who are
descended from their common ancestor, Andrew Byerly, the friend of Geo.
Washington and the founder of the Byerly family in this country. Andrew
Byerly was the grandfather of Francis Byerly and the great grandfather
of the three nephews who settled at New Port, Iowa in l846.
In
1883, Dr. Cyrus Cort, preacher, historian and poet, in the early days a
missionary in Iowa, wrote Colonel Henry Bouquet and His Campaigns.
Colonel Bouquet was a brave Swiss commander and a friend of Washington.
In the year 1883, 25,000 people gathered at the Bushy Run battlefield in
Pennsylvania and celebrated the 120th anniversary of one of his great
victories. This valuable book has now almost disappeared. Just before
Dr. Cort died in 1920 at the age of 86, he presented A.E. Byerly with
one of his last copies of the book. Many of these pages are given over
to a history of Andrew Byerly, the ancestor of so many Iowans, and his
connection with the early life of George Washington.
Dr. Cort, who was a great, great grandson of Andrew Byerly, visited a
son of the colonial soldier on Christmas Day, 1855. This son was Jacob
Byerly, a colonial soldier, who lived to be 99 years old. He died in
1858, and was buried under a fine military monument in Westmoreland
County, Pennsylvania, being the last man in that county to draw a
pension from the Revolutionary War. Through him were related to Dr. Cort
many of the interesting events in the life of Washington and his father,
Andrew Byerly, the colonial soldier and frontiersman. They had been told
to him by Michael Byerly, his older brother, the great grandfather of
Hon. Curtis H. Gregg, former United States congressman from
Pennsylvania. Michael was at Fort Cumberland when the haughty English
General Braddock assembled his army, magnificent in its uniform and
armor.
The school children will remember how Washington wished to
advise this British general, but he would have none of it, scorning to
think that his men were not a match for the Indian. Michael Byerly, 8
years old, was there taking in eagerly everything that was said. Some
Indian chiefs came to offer their service as scouts, but Braddock
snubbed them, saying that a few French and Indians would be small work
for his army and that they would run when they saw the "red coats"
coming.
Angered, the Indian made a wager of thirty shillings that
there was no white man among the men in his army who could outrun one of
their braves who had considerable renown as a runner. Colonel Washington
was in those days quite a sportsman. He believed that his friend Andrew
Byerly could outrun the Indian. Byerly, who had come to this country in
1738 at the age of 23, had long been popular in the colonial army and
was induced to come from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, by Benjamin Franklin
to bake for Braddock's army. To him Washington went, and Byerly raced
the boastful Indian and won the wager for Washington, much to the
surprise of the Indian and even General Braddock.
 Daughters of William M. & Eliza Byerly Floy (1882-1972) m. Rev. John Chester Tourtellot, Blanche (1885-1972) m. Royal A. Russell, Grace (1891-1972) m. Antone Johnson, Beulah Irene (1895-1989) m. Dr. Chester E. Miller, Lillian Arvilla (1896-1942) did not marry, Juanita Mildred ((1989-1991) m. George Mills. |
Not long after this incident, the English army, accompanied by
Washington and some frontiersmen, including Andrew, went out on its
historic and ill-fated expedition of 1755. The 8-year-old son of Andrew
Byerly never tired of telling his younger brother in later years what a
grand appearance Braddock's army made when it started out on that trip
to drive the French and Indians out of the Ohio Valley, and how it
looked when it returned defeated and nearly annihilated, its commander
dead and the survivors escaping through the help of Washington and the
frontiersmen who were skilled in Indian warfare.
About
this time Washington built a fort where Pittsburgh now stands.
Twenty-five miles from this fort at Bushy Run, Andrew Byerly, according
to Parkman, the historian, in the year 1759 built a home for himself and
family. There was no other home in this western country, and thus did
Andrew become the first permanent white settler west of the Allegheny
Mountains. It was here that Washington, Colonel Bouquet, Captain Ecuyer,
and other military men made their headquarters when entering the Ohio
Valley. James Kenney, an early commissioner for Pennsylvania, records in
his journal how Frederick Post, the great Moravian missionary to the
Indians, made Byerly Station, as it was known, his headquarters, and how
Josiah Davenport and William and John Bartram, the great botanists,
visited this first home in the distant west.
It was at Byerly
Station that Colonel Bouquet in 1763 won the famous battle of Bushy Run,
which forever destroyed the power of Indians in America. (!) It was
Andrew Byerly who led that advance guard in this battle, twelve out of
every eighteen being killed in the first fire, and it was he who carried
water to the wounded from springs on his farm during the night at great
risk to his life. This spring still flows, and near it a monument to
cost many thousands of dollars will be raised this coming summer (no
date) by the state of Pennsylvania, to commemorate the battlefield of
Bushy Run when a few brave settlers and Scotch Highlanders defeated many
times their number. Bouquet had come to save Fort Pitt, and it was
fitting that Andrew Byerly should be one of those who fought bravely for
two days to save the fort that his friend George Washington had built a
few years before.