My Genealogy Hound

Samuel Tyer, Wynne, Ark. This venerable man has been a resident of Arkansas since 1817 and this of itself is sufficient to give him an extensive acquaintance, even if his personal characteristics were not such as to draw around him many friends. He was born in Tennessee in 1812, and in 1815 the family moved to Cape Girardeau County, Mo., where his father, Wright Tyer, made one crop and then, not liking the country very well, he went down to the present State of Arkansas and made one crop in what is now Smith Township, Cross County. The next year (1817) he brought his family to this section and there lived for two years on vacant land. In 1820 he bought eighty acres of land from William Russell, of St. Louis, who had been buying up most of the valuable land in this section. The father died in 1831. On this farm Samuel Tyer spent his youth, helping to cultivate the farm. In those early days they experienced many hardships and endured many privations. At the time of their settlement, in 1817, there were but six families between Ben Crowley’s, in Green County, and the Jones place, then called Cherokee Village, on the southern border of the county. Here they lived, and as an occasional settler joined them the population increased. In 1838 Mr. Tyer married Miss Nancy Newton, a native of Wayne County, Tenn., whose father came to Arkansas in 1836 and started a blacksmith shop, but subsequently moved to Independence County, where he died at Sulphur Rock. After marriage Mr. Tyer bought a farm three miles north of the present village of Wynne, cleared about twenty-five acres and then sold out and moved to the Lone Star State, making the trip of 1,600 miles overland in six months. Not liking the country or the people he soon returned to Arkansas, satisfied that this country was good enough for him. On his return in 1862 he bought the place on which he still resides, a farm of 160 acres, which was almost wild land. This he immediately began to improve and at the present time has about forty acres under cultivation. He and wife are living all alone in a little house which has been their home for many years, and during that time they have witnessed the gradual development of the country. Their family consisted of eleven children, all now deceased but three: Josephus and Monroe (who are living on the old place) and Melinda Jane (who resides in Poinsett County). Mrs. Tyer spun and wove the goods from which their clothes were made and she had not bought any domestic until a few years ago. Mr. Tyer has lived in what is now Cross County, Ark., longer than any one now living, and in the vicinity of Copper’s Creek, where his father first settled, there were over thirty panthers killed in two years. This old and much-respected couple have lived for fifty-one years a happy married life and have had their share of the hardships incident to the early pioneers. They raised all their provisions and made their own clothing. Mr. Tyer still farms and has a good crop of corn this year. This worthy couple have a set of knives and forks, still in a good state of preservation, which they have used through all their married life.