My Genealogy Hound

Stephen M. Dyer was born in Washington County, Ark., in 1842, and is a son of Joel and Sarah Ann (Talkington) Dyer, natives of North Carolina and Kentucky, respectively. In 1836 Mr. Dyer’s mother and nine children started for Arkansas, some traveling up the Arkansas River in a flat-boat and some crossing the plains with stock. They located where Mountainburg now is, when the country was a wilderness but sparsely settled. Joel soon after married, and lived in Washington County until 1850, when he removed to Dyer Station, in this county. He was of English descent, a well-to-do farmer, a stock raiser and blacksmith, and died in 1864. The mother died in 1881, and both belonged to the Presbyterian Church. Caleb Dyer, our subject’s grandfather, was born in North Carolina, where he died when Joel was a boy. He was a soldier in one of the early wars. Stephen M. Dyer is the third child of a family of thirteen, six sons and six daughters living. He attended the log house subscription school-house of the neighborhood until seventeen, then attended a higher school in Washington County, and afterward went one term to Cane Hill College. Soon after the war began he joined a company of State troops, and afterward served in the First Arkansas Mounted Infantry under Col. Churchill. In June, 1862, he was transferred to the Twenty-second Arkansas Infantry, operating in the Trans-Mississippi Department. He was in active service during the entire time, and was never wounded or captured. He surrendered at Fort Smith. He accompanied Gen. Price on his raid through Missouri. In 1872 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Stephen Alsobrook, a native of South Carolina, who accompanied her father to this county in 1851. Mr. A. was a brigadier-general, and commanded the Crawford County militia at the battle of Elkhorn in 1862. Mr. and Mrs. Dyer have seven children, and since 1874 have lived adjoining the old homestead at Dyer Station, which was named in honor of the family. Mr. Dyer began life as a poor boy, but is now comfortably fixed, and owns and operates a good cotton-gin by steam. He is a Democrat, casting his first presidential vote for Seymour in 1868, and has served as justice of the peace of Alma Township. He belongs to the Alma Masonic Lodge No. 43, and is a member of the new order “Palm and Shell.” He is a Presbyterian and his wife is a Methodist.