BIO:  Michael Smyser, York County, PA

Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Kathy Francis

Copyright 2005.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
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History of York County, Pennsylvania.  John Gibson, Historical Editor.
Chicago: F. A. Battey Publishing Co., 1886.
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Part II, Biographical Sketches, Manchester Township, Pg 144

MICHAEL SMYSER was born in Spring Garden Township, July 8, 1846.  His parents 
were Henry and Mary (Emig) Smyser, of York County and of German descent.  They 
had three sons and one daughter, of whom Michael is the eldest.  One of the 
sons, Alexander, resides in Kansas; Horace in Spring Garden Township, and the 
daughter, who is married to Abraham Flory, in Lancaster County.  Michael is a 
descendant of the elder Mathias Smyser, who came from Germany in 1738, and 
settled in Kreutz Creek Valley, in York County, where he carried on weaving an a 
small way.  He took a large tract of land, much of which he afterward gave away 
in order to induce settlers to locate.  He afterward removed to a place three 
miles west of York, where, in 1778, he died.  He had three sons:  Michael 
(probably grandfather of the subject of this sketch), Jacob and Mathias.  
Michael was captain of a company in Col. M. Swope’s regiment in the 
Revolutionary war, and was captured at Fort Washington, November 16, 1776.  He 
was several times a member of the Pennsylvania legislature, and from 1794 to 
1798, a member of the State senate.  The subject of this sketch was brought up 
on this farm in Spring Garden Township, and received his education in public 
schools and in the York Academy.  He began for himself at the age of twenty-
seven years, when he was married, at York, to Sarah Kauffman, daughter of Joseph 
Kauffman (deceased farmer of Spring Garden Township).  They had two children:  
Henry K. and Susan M.  In 1874 he removed to his present residence, known as the 
“Old John Brillinger Farm,” of about 200 acres, to the cultivation of which and 
stock raising he devotes his entire attention.  He belongs to the Lutheran 
Church, is a man that attends entirely to his own business, and is considered 
one of the most enterprising and successful farmers in York County.