My Genealogy Hound

SIMON BEYMER, white-lead manufacturer, Pittsburgh, was born near Somerset, Perry county, Ohio, in April, 1829. His grandfather, Simon Beymer, was born in Somerset county, Pa., in 1782, and was descended from the early German settlers of Eastern Pennsylvania. His wife, Ann Clark, was born in the same locality (top of Laurel hill) in 1779, and came of Scotch lineage. In 1805 this couple went to Guernsey county, Ohio, and founded Beymerstown (now Washington), where Simon Beymer and his brother Henry were the first settlers. Simon built a hotel which was called the “Black Bear,” in 1805, and lived there till his death, in 1848. He raised a company for the war of 1812, and was elected captain. After the war he was made a general of militia. His widow continued to conduct the hotel with the aid of her son John, and after the death of the latter he was succeeded by another son, Conrad. Mrs. Beymer died in 1874. The family, which included seven sons and two daughters, associated with the Lutheran Church. The third son, George, married Nancy A. Clark, a native of Washington county, Pa., and settled on a farm in Perry county, Ohio. He died in Williamsburg, Ohio, in 1844, aged forty-two years. Nancy Beymer’s parents were of Scotch descent, and were born on the same day and died in the same building on the same day, making her an orphan at an early age. She is now living, in her eighty-fourth year. Her children number four sons and four daughters, the name of the third heading this sketch.

The early education of the subject of this memoir was secured at the public school, and was finished by a private tutor He began life when seventeen years old, as a drug clerk. While thus employed he made a thorough study of the science of medicine, but never took up its practice. In 1852 he came to Pittsburgh, and took employment with the wholesale drug house of B. A. Fahnestock & Co., which firm was engaged in the manufacture of white-lead. At the end of five years he became a partner with B. L. Fahnestock in the wholesale drug business, and later engaged in the manufacture of white-lead. In 1867 the firm of Beymer, Bauman & Co., was formed, and established white-lead works, and on the death of Reuben F. Bauman, in December, 1885, Mr. Beymer bought the interest of his estate, and organized the Beymer-Bauman Lead company, of which he is president, his eldest son, Hervey W. Beymer, being manager. Mr. Beymer sustains the church of his parents and family, the Presbyterian, and follows the political precedents of his ancestry, whig and republican. He is an active member of the Masonic fraternity, having attained the thirty-second degree. In 1855 Mr. Beymer married Annie C., daughter of George and Fanny L. Fracker, all of Massachusetts birth. Mrs. Beymer passed from earth Dec. 30, 1882, in her forty-eighth year Of her seven children, the eldest three are associated in business with their father, and the fourth is a bookkeeper in the Keystone National Bank. Following are their names in order of birth: Hervey W., George H., Charles F., Albert S., Clara, Helen and Harry C.