Crawford Co., AR - Biographies - Stephen M. Dyer

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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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Stephen M. Dyer was born in Washington County, Ark., in 1842, and is a 
son of Joel and Sarah Ann (Talkington) Dyer, natives of North Carolina 
and Kentucky, respectively. In 1836 Mr. Dyer's mother and nine 
children started for Arkansas, some traveling up the Arkansas River in 
a flat-boat and some crossing the plains with stock. They located 
where Mountainburg now is, when the country was a wilderness but 
sparsely settled. Joel soon after married, and lived in Washington 
County until 1850, when he removed to Dyer Station, in this county. He 
was of English descent, a well-to-do farmer, a stock raiser and 
blacksmith, and died in 1864. The mother died in 1881, and both 
belonged to the Presbyterian Church. Caleb Dyer, our subject's 
grandfather, was born in North Carolina, where he died when Joel was a 
boy. He was a soldier in one of the early wars. Stephen M. Dyer is the 
third child of a family of thirteen, six sons and six daughters 
living. He attended the log house subscription school-house of the 
neighborhood until seventeen, then attended a higher school in 
Washington County, and afterward went one term to Cane Hill College. 
Soon after the war began he joined a company of State troops, and 
afterward served in the First Arkansas Mounted Infantry under Col. 
Churchill. In June. 1862, he was transferred to the Twenty-second 
Arkansas Infantry, operating in the Trans-Mississippi Department. He 
was in active service during the entire time, and was never wounded or 
captured. He surrendered at Fort Smith. He accompanied Gen. Price on 
his raid through Missouri. In 1872 he married Elizabeth, daughter of 
Stephen Alsobrook, a native of South Carolina, who accompanied her 
father to this county in 1851. Mr. A. was a brigadier-general, and 
commanded the Crawford County militia at the battle of Elkhorn in 
1862. Mr. and Mrs. Dyer have seven children, and since 1874 have lived 
adjoining the old homestead at Dyer Station, which was named in honor 
of the family. Mr. Dyer began life a poor boy, but is now comfortably 
fixed, and owns and operates a good cotton-gin by steam. He is a 
Democrat, casting his first presidential vote for Seymour in 1868, and 
has served as justice of the peace of Alma Township. He belongs to the 
Alma Masonic Lodge No. 43, and is a member of the new order "Palm and 
Shell." He is a Presbyterian and his wife is a Methodist.