Crawford Co., AR - Biographies - William H. Byers

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SOURCE: History of Benton, Washington, Carroll, Madison, Crawford,
Franklin, and Sebastian Counties, Arkansas. Chicago: The Goodspeed 
Publishing Co., 1889.
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William H. Byers, loan and real estate agent at Alma, was born in Fort Smith in 
1862, and is a son of W. H. and Ann C. (Williams) Byers, natives of Carolina and 
Tennessee, respectively, who were married in Nashville, Tenn. In 1855 they 
settled in Little Rock, Ark., and shortly after went to Fort Smith, where the 
father engaged in the shoe and tanning business until 1865, and then removed 
near Alma, where he died in 1885. He was of Irish descent, a strong Whig, and a 
member of the Masonic fraternity and I. O. O. F. The mother is still living. 
William H. Byers is the youngest of a family of six children, five of whom are 
living. After attending the common school he spent the winter of 1883-84 at 
Oxford, Miss., in a law school. He then taught school ten months in Crawford 
County, but has since devoted his attention to the practice of his profession in 
connection with the real estate business. He has been very successful, and in 
1887 was elected mayor of Alma. He practices in the Crawford County Court and 
the United States Court at Fort Smith, and has bought a farm of 156 acres, near 
Alma, which is well improved and cultivated. In 1884 he married Rosie B., 
daughter of Josiah and Julia C. Foster, and by this marriage has one child. Mr. 
Foster was a pioneer settler of this county, who came here a poor young man, but 
steadily accumulated property until he became one of the wealthiest men in the 
county, owning 2,500 acres at the time of his death, in 1872. He was twice 
married, and Mrs. Byers is his twenty-sixth child. He was a life-long and 
zealous Democrat. Mr. and Mrs. Byers belong to the Missionary Baptist Church, 
and the former is a Mason.