Family stories passed down from generation to generation are always subject to change! When using those stories to support genealogical conclusions, one must tread lightly – looking for something to prove or disprove the story. Such is the case for a death of one of my female Byerley ancestors.
Altie Barley, my great aunt, conveyed the story that either her grandmother or possibly her great-grandmother died as a result of being hit by a man on a bicycle. She did not remember which one or when as she was either young when the accident happened or it happened before she was born. Years later, the wife of a cousin from the same family, told me she had heard that the death occurred during a robbery attempt.
Looking at what I knew about the Byerley family, the potential “grandmother” was one of the following:
| Ancestor | Relationship (Altie) | Birth | Death |
|---|---|---|---|
| Malissia Byerley | Grandmother | 1837 | Between 1880 – 1900 |
| Sarah Brown Byerley | Great-Grandmother | 1803 | Before 1880 |
| Sarah Smith Byerley | Great-Grandmother | 1808 | Before 1870 |
Because there was not clear context of when and Altie was not sure it wasn’t one of the Sarah’s, but she thought it was Malissia, I did not eliminate the Sarah’s from my research.
I exhausted all the typical records – census, death records, cemeteries – to attempt to determine death dates for the three women. That lead me the specifics above.
I felt if there was a robbery / death involved, there should have been information in court records and reporting of the incident in the local newspaper. I found nothing in the available court records. The surviving local newspapers are not available for the entire search period and in those that remained I found no mention of the death of a Byerly woman. I was stuck with a family story that has two very different versions of what happened passed down by two different siblings.
That initial research was before the digitization of older newspapers and their ultimate emergence online. And it was before the availability of tools that could automatically read those digital images and create indexes to assist with searching. I knew at some point as more newspapers came online that I might just find what I was looking for!
On the 14th of September in 2022, I was performing a generic search for Byerly in the newspapers looking for tidbits associated with the family and Eureka – there it was – the proof to the story that my Great Aunt Altie had told me around 40 years earlier.
It was Malissia Byerly that died on the 1st of September in 1899 in Dayton, Tennessee. The article appeared in “The Weekly Sentinel” published in Knoxville, Tennessee, dated September 6, 1899, on page 5. The article did not state her name but referred to her as Mrs. Byerly. Her age and her daughter’s name were given and by that I knew it was Malissia. Following that lead, I was also able to find a report in “The Chattanooga Daily Times” published on the 2nd of September 1899.
It was not a robbery! As she was returning from the post office and crossed the steel bridge over Richland Creek, she was hit by a man on a bicycle who was riding at a high rate of speed.
The mystery had been solved! The family story had been proven! And I had found the death date of my 2nd great-grandmother Malissia Byerly.
