Biography of Samuel Tyer, St Francis County, AR

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Submitted by: Paul V Isbell
        Date: 22 Jan 2009
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
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Samuel Tyer, Wynne, Ark. This venerable man has been a resident of Arkansas
since 1817, and this of itself is sufficient to give him extensive acquaintance,
even if his personal characteristics were not such to draw around him many
friends. He was born in Tennessee in 1812, and in 1815, the family moved to Cape
Giradeau County, Mo., where his father, Wright Tyer, made on crop and then, not
liking the country very well, he went down to the present state of Arkansas and
made on crop in what was then Smith Township, Cross County. The next year (1817)
he brought his family to this section and there lived on vacant land for two
years. 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. His
father died in 1831. On this farm, Samuel Tyer spent his youth, helping to
cultivate the farm. In those early days they exerienced many hardships and
endured many privations. At the time of their settlement, in 1817, there were
but six families between Ben Crowley's place, in Greene 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 oveland 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 his wife are living all alone in a 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. 

Goodspeed Memoirs and Biograhies-1890