William C Myers (1789 - 1853)

Born 1789 in Rowan, North Carolina, United States

Ancestors

Husband of Christina (Goss) Myers — married 1810 in Barren, Kentucky, USA

Descendants

Died 1853 at about age 64 in Moberly, Randolph, Missouri, United States

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Biography

William C. Myers, the grandfather of John C., first came to Kentucky in the days of Boone. He there married Miss Christina Goff and in 1819 they came to this state and settled in Old Franklin in Howard County. He then removed to Fayette and in the spring of 1836 came over into Randolph County where he resided until his death, which was in 1854. He built the first mill ever erected in Howard County. His first wife died in 1849 and he afterwards married Miss Paulina Hunt who is also now deceased. Of his family David Myers was born in Barren County, Ky. and he had four brothers and one sister.

Notes by Mittie Myers William C. Myers, the grandfather of John C., first came to Kentucky in the days of Boone. He there married Miss Christina Goff and in 1819 they came to this state and settled in Old Franklin in Howard County. He then removed to Fayette and in the spring of 1836 came over into Randolph County where he resided until his death, which was in 1854. He built the first mill ever erected in Howard County. His first wife died in 1849 and he afterwards married Miss Paulina Hunt who is also now deceased. Of his family David Myers was born in Barren County, Ky. and he had four brothers and one sister.

Additional notes from Mittie Myers, a great-granddaughter. Father’s recollections of his grandparents were given to him orally and bear the marks ot a personal acquaintance with them. He toid me that his grandmother’s name was Christian Goss. This discrepancy in spelling was understandable. My father gave it as he had heard it in his boyhood. Dick or John C., gave it as he had seen it written; he had probaoly mistaken the old eighteenth century form of writing the double "ss" for a double “ff.” The name “Christine” is simply the modern and femine form of -"Christian."

The other facts which my father told me were of the most general nature - no dates, no pistes. He said his grandmother (Christina) was German born and spoke oniy broken English. His grandtather also spoke German but could converse in English. To date this is all that we know of Christian Goss and her family. An Abraham Goss was an eariy settler of Randolph County, Mo., and might be related. There were many Goss families in scattered counties of Kentucky. Had I time for further research the first one I would check would be William Goss. He resided in Green County, Ky. in 1810 and had three daughters between the ages of ten and sixteen; one of them could be Christian Goss. Indirectly we might also learn of the whereabouts of William Myers before 1814.

Christian Goss and William Myers were married in Kentucky, the year he was twenty-one, about 1810. He approximated this from the information about John C. Myers and from the date of their birth of their eldest son Henry in 1811. In 1817 their son David was born in Barren County. William had appeared in 1814 on the tax lists of that County with one tithable and two horses and remained on the tax list of that County until 1819.

Just when, whence, with whom he came to Kentucky are still unanswered questions as well as who were his parents. There was a William Myers from North Carolina who was with Daniel Boone at the sight of Boonesboro in 1774 and is said to have been one of the eighteen unidentified men who, in 1775, helped him lay out and clear “Boone’s Trace“ from Cumberland Gap to Boonesboro. Any connection between him and William C. Myers of North Caroline, Kentucky and Missouri is as yet a missing link, but a possible one. Only a search in North Carolina records can help here. In Vol. VI of Virkus’ Compendium on page 381 is printed a genealogical account of he family of Thomas Franklin Mckamy of Dallas, Texas, which traces one line back to " a John C. Myers who came from Switzerland in l750 and settled in Pennsylvania.“ His son was William, born in 1751 and went with Daniel Boone, presumably from North Carolina. This and other items in my notes are clues worth pursuing in the search for William Myers’ parents.

The only thing my father could tell me of the family before his grandfather was a story which, I am told by authorities of genealogical research, is common in families, particularly in the west. It is the story of three brothers who came from Europe end settled here. The story as told by my father was: William Myers was the son of one of three brothers who had come from Germany in the last century (meaning the 18th), one of whom had settled in Tennessee, another in Pennsylvania, and the third in Ohio. That tradition still stands, neither proved nor disproved. Should this story as related by my father be true and stand up under investigation it will be one of the few which has, particularly since these brothers did not cling together but scattered into three different states.

In 1839, John C. Myers tells us William Myers picked up stakes and Joined that ever-mounting stream of westward-moving Kentuckians bound for Missouri. That year his name disappeared from the Barren County tax rolls. He settled at what is now designated as Old Franklin in Howard County, Missouri, about eight miles southwest of Boone's Lick, a salt spring discovered by Daniel Boone in 1807 on one of his hunting trips and operated by two of his sons as a salt factory. Howard County had been set up in 1816 and was made up of all the territory north of the Osage River. Out of it thirty-one counties have since been carved, including Randolph County set up in 1829.

The town of Franklin was laid out in 1817 and was located on the north bank of the Missouri River. It had a phenomenal growth. Contributory to this growth had been several factors. One was its location on the banks of the river, easy access for transportation. Another was its nearness to Boone’s Lick known since 1887 for its salt manufacture. Third, and not the least, was its location on the extreme outpost settlement where it became headquarters for the very profitable business of outfitting western for traders along the Santa Fe Trail.

All too short-lived was this prosperity in Old Franklin! As settlements advanced westward, and fur traders together with the highly profitable business it carried also moved westward. Then the Missouri River relentlessly and swiftly cut away at the eastern turn in its course just a few miles west of town. Within ten years from its founding, the townsite had been completely washed away.

What happened to William Myers the family history does not say, but it is reasonable to suppose that this disaster furnished the motive for his removal about this time to Fayette, the county seat. In the spring of 1836, so the family record goes, he moved still farther from the river into the newly carved out Randolph County. This is borne out by the U.S. Land Office records of Missouri in which we find that on January 28, 1836 he bought the East ½ of the Southwest ¼ of Section 22, Township 54, Range 13; in February, 1836 he bought two other tracks of land. On June 28, 1836 he recorded these three patents in Randolph County. He had now a farm of 200 continuous acres plus another 4o only a quarter mile away.

On the first Lord’s Day in July, 1837 , eleven persons, who had been members of the Christian Church in Kentucky, organized Antioch Christian Church, the first in Randolph County. To these eleven “constituent” members were early added, along with twenty-four others: David Myers and wife Mary; Henry Myers and wife Judith; William Myers and wife Christian.

To this group, William Myers gave two acres of his homestead north of what is now Federal Highway 24 for a church and cemetery site. The present frame building was substituted in 1860 for the log structure they immediately built in 1837. The cemetery to the west of the church might just as well have been called the Myers Cemetery. In 1956 I counted no less than thirty-one well-marked graves of members of the family. A cousin claimed that there were sixty-three marked and unmarked graves of the Myers family there.

William Myers had come to Missouri with a family of three boys and one girl - Henry, Hannah, David, and Julius. Two other sons were born In Missouri — Michael and William. His wife Christian, mother of his children, died in 1849. He died in 1854, his second wife Pauliana surviving him. William and Christian’s children were:

1) Henry, b. 1811, Kentucky; m. Judith Shrader ca. 1839 in Missouri; d. May 7, 1851 2) Hannah, b. Kentucky; m. Joseph M. Davis in Missouri; d. Stockton, California. 3) David, b. June 6, 1817, Barren County, Kentucky; m. Eliza Shrader March 9, 1841; d. October 21, 1898. 4) Julius, b. 1818, Kentucky; m. Mary E. Gates in Missouri; d. near Vacaville, California. 5) Michael, b. ca. 1827, Missouri; m. Sarah ?; d. near Moberly, Missouri. 6) Michael, b. ca. 1835, Missouri; moved to Indiana, m. and d. there.

William Myers Jr. (1835-) Of William Myers, youngest son of William and Christian Myers, we know little beyond the mention as a minor age fifteen in the 1850 census of Randolph County, and my father's statement that he went to Indiana before 1860, raised a large family and died there.

Michael Myers (1827 -)

Of Michael and his wife, Sarah, my father was able to tell only that he was a farmer near Moberly and that he personally remembered but two children, James and John, of a large family. The 1850 census lists him as a farmer in Madison County, age 23, his wife Sarah, age 29, and with no children at this time.

Julius Myers (1818-)

Julius Myers is listed in the 1850 census of Monroe County, Missouri, as a farmer, age 32, born in Kentucky, worth $200. Listed with him were his wife, Mary E., age 21, born in Missouri, and a baby daughter, Mary E., born in Missouri. Julius was the third son of William and Christian and had married Mary E. Gates in Missouri. My father said of him, “Their children are the Myers of Vacaville.

Hannah (Myers) Davis

Hannah Myers, the only daughter of William and Christian, was born in Kentucky, married Joseph M. Davis with whom she joined the early trek to California, settling near Stockton. They had one son and two daughters that I know of. I remember that the son, Joseph Davis, in the early 1880’s lived on a farm near Stockton.

David Myers (1817-1893)

David Myers, second son of William and Christian, was born June 6, 1816, in Barren County, Kentucky, and was taken by his parents to Missouri in 1819. He married Eliza Shrader, born February 29, 1817, in Bourbon County, Kentucky, in Randolph County on March 9, 1841. His brother, Henry, two years before had married Judith, the other of the two daughters of Conrad and Lydia (Heathman) Shrader. By 1850 David had acquired enough of land and personal property to be rated on the census returns as worth $300, a figure worthwhile then. His wife died December 19, 1884; he died October 21, 1893. Both are buried in Antioch Cemetery adjoining the Antioch Church of which he and his wife had been members almost since its inception. They had reared a large family of five boys and five girls (John C. was one of the sons).

Henry Myers (1811-1851)

Henry Myers was born in Kentucky in 1811, the eldest son of William and Christian, but in what county and the exact date are not known. His tombstone at Antioch Church, four and one-half miles east of Moberly, Missouri, records his birth and death but the birthdate is now illegible. The balance reads: Died May 7, 1851. “Age ‘forty years.”

On January 18, 1839, Henry applied for patent on the North West ¼ of North West ¼ of Section 27 in Township 54, Range 13, a forty-acre tract immediately south of and adjacent to this father’s land in Section 22. It was in this year that he married Judith Shrader (Variously spelled as Judah and on her tombstone, Judia), daughter of Conrad and Lydia (Heathman) Shrader. She was born in Bourbon County, Kentucky, July 4, 1818.

To Henry and Judith were born four children: 1) James David, b. March 22, 1840, m. March 10, 1870, Mary Richard Duvall; d. March 27, 1921 2) Lydia A. Myers, died July 24, 1856, age 14 years, 7 months and 4 days. Killed by a runaway horse. 3) Emily Myers, died Oct. 22, 1855, aged 12 years 1 month. 4) Clifton R. Myers, born Mar. 6, 1846. Died Sept. 14, 1864. He accidentally shot himself while hunting.

The last three inscriptions on three tombstones in Antioch Cemetery tells the tragic story of the Henry Myers Family. This father had died in 1851, leaving his widow and two sons, eleven and six, to do the little they could to eke out an existence for the family of five. Circa 1860, widowed and with only her two boys left, Judith Myers married Elisha B. Brewer listed in the same 1850 census in Union Township as a saddler born in Kentucky and twelve years her junior. The only child of the Brewer marriage was Lelia who died at three years of age. Elisha Brewer died ca. 1876; Judith died July 29, 1879. Both are buried at Antioch. My father, James David Myers, was the oldest son of Henry and Judith Myers. Born March 22, 1840, in the little new log house his father build on the "forty", patented in 1839, he was their only child to reach maturity. On his father's death in 1851 this eleven-year-old boy took on a man's work which increased as he grew older, for his mother didn't remarry until nine years later. Then, November 12, 1862, James D. Myers enrolled at the Huntsville, Missouri Militia, under the command of Colonel Denney and Captain Skinner. If this unit ever saw service it was not until after April 13, 1863. On that day Tunsford Coates obtained a permit to take 50 men, including James D. Myers, from this regiment as armed guards for a mule train he was taking to San Francisco. For the six months he already served in the militia, James received $45.

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Data Changed

Data Changed:

Date: 24 MAR 2010

Prior to import, this record was last changed 24 MAR 2010.

Sources

• WikiTree profile Myers-1158 created through the import of Shurtliff Family.ged on Jun 20, 2011 by Mark Shurtliff. See the Changes page for the details of edits by Mark and others.

Ancestry.com. Missouri, History of Randolph and Macon Counties [database on-line]. Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2005. Original data: History of Randolph and Macon Counties, Missouri. written and compiled from the most authentic official and private sources. St. Louis: National Historical Co., 1884.

Source Description This collection consists of a history of the Missouri counties of Randolph and Macon, "written and compiled from the most authentic official and private sources".

Mittie Myers notes of interviews with her father, James David Myers, were taken in 1910.