Ole's Blog

Philip Myers, Patriot, part 1

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

Cousin Gail Myers and some other relatives traced Dan Myers’ ancestry back to a certain immigrant Philip Myers, born in Mainz, Germany in 1759. Using LDS sources, I found Philip’s birth record in the German churchbooks, along with several generations before him. Note that subsequent research has put the validity of this finding in doubt.

Also problematic has been Philip and his family’s early life in Maryland. I found one reference to him in the following source:As for his parents, Valentin Myers and Theresia, I have found nothing at all so far. Indeed, it is now questionable whether these were even the names of his parents. I did find Philip’s military pension claim, along with a land grant to  his now well-established brother, Lieutenant Lawrence Myers.

Philip has quite a few descendants, as evidenced by his appearance in no less that 18 family trees registered with Ancestry.com. Some of them show as many as twelve children of Philip and Martha, although the document below lists only seven.

Philip Myers, part 2: Brother Lawrence

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

Since my last post, cousin Gail sent me yet another information-filled packet. One item in particular provides a closer look at Philip Myers (1759-1835), great-great grandfather of Dan Myers, and Philip’s brother Lawrence (1754-1810).

“Genealogical and Family History of Wyoming and Lackawanna Valleys — —- (illegible words)” by Horace Edwin Haydon. However, openlibrary.org lists the author as John W. Jordan, LL.D. ISBN number is 0788429175.

You will recall that the Wyoming Valley is in Pennsylvania; the territory that would one day be the state of Wyoming had not yet been discovered by Europeans at the time of the Revolutionary War. Here begins the passage on the brothers Myers. The highlighting is from an earlier researcher, either cousin Gail or his niece, cousin Paula.Another printed source gives the year of immigration as 1766. By “hardships and perils of those days,” the author means the many Indian wars and conflicts in the area, including an infamous massacre at Forty Fort in 1778, immediately after the fort had surrendered to the invading Indian and British forces. The same Horace E. Haydon wrote a whole book on the massacre and its aftermath. It can be read for free at this site. It is awfully dry, though. I recommend instead, this  brief article.

Frustratingly, the name of the father of Philip, Lawrence, Henry, and Michael Myers; that is, the “founder of the family,” is apparently unknown, even to this very well-sourced author. Until recently, I was sure it was Valentin (or some variant), but I have yet to find any documents relating to the father’s presence in Maryland.The “Pennamites” were bitter rivals of the Yankee (New England) settlers. During the Revolution, they aligned with the Indians and British, and were still making “troubles” ten years after the massacre at Forty Fort. One can easily imagine the spiral of revenge upon revenge that ravaged both sides. The narrative now backs up to 1777. It  implies both brothers are present; Lawrence must still be a private:Here is Wikipedia’s account of the Americans’ defeat at Germantown.

Note that no children are mentioned of Lawrence Myers and Sarah Gore. That will figure into Philip Myers’ family in the next post.

Philip Myers, part 3: His Family

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

Continuing with the passage on the Myers family from “Genealogical and Family History of Wyoming and Lackawanna Valleys,”Martha Bennett, my 4th great-grandmother, would have been fifteen years old at the time of the massacre. Presumably, when her two brothers were killed (this is contradicted by other sources), she was driven (along with the other women and children) into the surrounding wilderness by the attacking Indians, while their houses burned, and their men and older boys were slaughtered. There were only a few soldiers guarding the fort, as most of them were in combat elsewhere.

It must be remembered that such atrocities were also often committed by the whites, each side seeking ever-greater revenge. This particular massacre could never have happened except as part of a white-vs.-white man’s war. For starters, the Indians were paid ten dollars by the British for each Yankee scalp they collected. Remember also that the savage practice of scalping one’s victims was itself introduced to the Indians by whites from Europe, where it had been known since at least the 11th century. (Oh-oh, it was our 28th great-grandpa, the Earl of Wessex, who was noted for it back then.)

After they married nine years later,In addition to William, child number two (Lawrence) also removed to Sunbury, Ohio; in fact, the two brothers are credited with the founding of the town. This “Lawrence” was the father of Henry B. Myers (father of Stephen Bennett Myers) and thus the great-grandfather of Dan Myers. Getting back to the 1790’s, the youngest four children of Philip Myers and Martha Bennett were:There follows a lengthy biography of Philip & Martha’s eldest son, John Myers, and his family and descendants. One of John’s sons was named Lawrence; I guess he was the “Lawrence” for that generation. This Lawrence stayed put to become a very rich citizen of the Wyoming valley, and so gets an elaborate biography himself. I am a little confused about the succession protocol for the generational moniker, “Lawrence.” Hopefully cousin Gail can fill us in.

Here is an image of Philip Myers’ home as it looked in 1857 (some decades after his death).

As for Martha Bennett’s pedigree:

A word of explanation about the arrest of Thomas Bennett and his companions by the “Pennsylvania authorities” in 1770: The Wyoming valley was claimed by both Pennsylvania and Connecticut colonies, due to conflicting land grants from the British crown. The Pennsylvanians, called “Pennamites,” arrested Bennett et. al. because they were New Englanders, that is, “Yankees,” settling on land considered to belong to their rivals. As I learned, there were wars between the two colonies’ partisans before and after the Revolution.

Interestingly, the article linked above does not mention the Forty Fort massacre, perhaps because it was considered part of the Revolutionary rather than Pennamite wars. That is a questionable notion, in that the wars were closely interrelated. As noted earlier, many Pennamites were Tories, siding with the British, and therefore doubly opposed to the “Connecticut Yankees.”

Once again, a hearty thank-you to cousin Gail Myers for feeding me this awesome document.

Philip Myers: Jackpot!

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

I just found *THE* source I have been looking for, but didn’t know anything about until I found it.This 3-volume work (dated 1889, in case the date above is too faint) is an exhaustive history of the Yankee (New England) settlers in the Wyoming valley of Pennsylvania. Volume 2 contains about twenty pages on the Myers-Bennett families, including extensive coverage of the entire Pennamite-Yankee wars of 1771-1789, and the intersecting Revolutionary War. There are detailed accounts of all the military encounters, arrests, murders, etc., interspersed with personal anecdotes from the perspective of the Bennets and Myers’, including direct quotes from the words of Martha Bennett Myers, my fourth great-grandmother.

The Myers brothers, being Germans from Maryland, were not Yankees per se, but fought on the Patriot side, and threw in their lot with them when they moved to the Wyoming Valley following the Revolution.

Below are some excerpts from this text, with my own commentary. More excerpts will be found in the series on Thomas and Martha Bennett. If you wish to go deeper, the complete original can be read for free at this site. The section on the Myers and Bennett families begins near the bottom of page 629. Caveat: The narrative is strictly from the Yankee perspective. The Pennamites no doubt had a competing version, even more so, the Indians, who are reviled on every page of this source.

Lawrence and Philip Myers

Thursday, March 18th, 2010

Here is what the book I recently discovered online, “Families of the Wyoming Valley…” by Geo. P. Kulp, has to say about the life of Lt. Lawrence Myers, brother of 4th great-grandfather Philip Myers, as it relates to the Yankee settlement of that valley (p. 630):

Lieutenant Lawrence Myers was ever a favorite. His large, round face seemed radiant with benevolence and cheerfulness. Besides several offices in the militia, he was for thirty years a magistrate, and from 1800 to 1803 a commissioner of the county. The plan of the old court house that was located on the public square, a cross, was introduced by him, taken from that at Fredericktown, which doubtless owed its origin to the Roman Catholic settlers of Maryland under their liberal and tolerant founder. The delight of his life was to talk of Frederick, and anything that existed or came from there was an object of his special regard. Owning one of the noblest plantations on the Kingston flats, adjoining the Plymouth line, though he did not personally labor, he caused it to be highly cultivated, the produce of which yielded a liberal support. In winter the large and elegant cloth cloak, in those early days an article of dress too fine and costly not to be rare, gave to his noble person an imposing appearance. He died at the age of fifty years, leaving, as he had no children, his fine estate to Mrs. Myers and his brothers.

This sheds some light on the tradition that one male in each generation  of  Myers’ should be named Lawrence, even though this particular Lawrence had no children. It appears that his status was preeminent among his brothers. Interesting number-crunch:  if Lawrence died at age fifty, and was a magistrate for “thirty years,” he became a magistrate at age twenty? I sense some exaggeration there.

On the next page, Philip Myers gets almost as much space:

Philip Myers came to Wyoming in 1785, and was married to Martha, daughter of Thomas Bennett, July 15, 1787, he being aged twenty-seven and she twenty-four years. Thomas Bennett gave his son-in-law a town lot on the north line of old Forty Fort. On this he erected a comfortable house, constructed of yellow pine logs, hewed, and pointed with lime mortar, and limed on the inside. Mr. Myers purchased a lot of one hundred and forty acres, extending from Forty Fort to the top of the mountain. He cleared up his farm, and also raised a large family of children. For many years he kept a public house. His house being situated on an eddy in the Susquehanna, it was a great place of resort for the lumbermen, bringing their pine lumber from the upper part of the Susquehanna and its tributaries and taking it to the Baltimore and Philadelphia markets. The consequence was that Mr. Myers’ house was thronged for weeks by the hardy ” raftsmen ” every spring. He died April 2, 1835. His widow subsequently married Rev. Benjamin A. Bidlack, as his second wife.

It is Philip’s future wife Martha, along with her father, Thomas Bennett, whose experiences during the years of Pennamite and Revolutionary wars, including the bloody battle and massacre of July 1778, are minutely detailed in the next dozen pages. We explore those experiences in the next series.