Sarah Jane Smith, my 2nd great-grandmother, was born in 1859 in Indiana, the eldest child of David and Polly (Miller) Smith. In 1860, Jane (she went by her middle name her entire life) with her parents was living in Milan Township, Allen County, Indiana. Her father was a farmer. While I didn’t make a note to remind me who told me, it was said that he voted for Lincoln. During the Civil War, David served with Company G, 152nd Regiment. The 1870 census located Jane, her parents and three younger siblings still residing in Milan Township, Allen County, Indiana; Jane was attending school. Jane was married in 1874, when she was only fifteen years old, to William Andrew Byers, aged twenty-one. When I was fifteen, I was learning geometry and playing soccer. Sure, “it was a different time,” but what a tragedy that for millennia women were pigeonholed into marriage, childbearing and “women’s work” before they were even mature enough to comprehend all that was being taken from them. Jane was sixteen when her eldest child was born in 1876, and had a total of seven children by the time she was thirty-three.
William, Jane and their two children Calvin and Rose lived in Milan Township, Allen County, Indiana when the census was taken in 1880. William was a farmer and Sarah was keeping house. On 15 May 1884, someone wrote to William and Jane, warning that her mother Polly was close to death. It’s possible that the writer was Jane’s father David, or perhaps a sibling, but the letter was missing a signature when I transcribed it in 2010. It read:
“Well Jane and William it is with sorrow that I tak my pen in hand to let you know how we are and Jane your mother would like to see you all one more [time] in this world. Jane your mother has bid you all fare well. She says that it seames hard to die and not see you all one more [time]. Jane and William hope these fue lines will find you all well. William I had a docter to day he said she mit live five or six weeks. Jane your mother is so week that she can’t git off her bed to doo her bisnes. William and Jane if you see your Mother alive you will hav to come soon. Well children I can’t rite no more. If no more rit soon. From your father and mother and brothers and sisters. So goodby. Jane, in a litel while I have no home. Rite soon. Grany says good by Cally and Nora.”
I have not been able to find a death record for Polly in almost thirty years of research, but according to her stone in the Bowers Cemetery in Saint Joseph Township, Allen County, Indiana, she did indeed die in 1884. I don’t know whether Jane was able to visit her mother before she passed away, but in 1900, 1910 and 1920 David Smith, Jane’s father, was living with his son Amherst Smith.
William was listed in the 1890 directory of Allen County, Indiana in Cedar Creek Township. In the 1895 Fort Wayne City directory he was listed as residing at Gar Creek, Milan Township, and in 1896 in Cedarville, Perry Township. I have not located William and Jane in the 1900 census. When the census was taken in 1910, they were living in Lake Township, Allen County, Indiana, and William was working as a laborer doing odd jobs. The 1920 census located them residing in Fort Wayne, Allen County, Indiana, where neither of them gave an occupation; they were likely retired. Someone told me that at one time William owned an icehouse in Fort Wayne. In the 1922 Fort Wayne city directory they are listed at 1804 Howell Street. William died in 1923, when he was seventy years old. According to his obituary, “William A. Byers…a retired farmer, died…at his home, 1804 Howell Street, of Bright’s disease. He had been ill nearly two years.”
Jane went to live with her brother Amherst Smith in Milan Township, Allen County, Indiana, and was living there when the census was enumerated in 1930. I have not been able to find her in the 1940 census, but she was not living then with her brother or with any of her children. In 1950, Jane was living with her son-in-law and daughter Bert and Anna Glander at 2325 Lillie Street in Fort Wayne, Allen County, Indiana. Bert and Anna were my great-grandparents, the parents of my maternal grandmother. Anna died in December 1951, and Jane passed away just two months later in February 1952, the day after my mother was born. In fact, her obituary lists her survivors including her four sons, two other daughters, 25 grandchildren, and “several” great-grandchildren, among whom my mother would have been counted if there had been an actual number. The obituary also says that “Mrs. Sarah J. Byers…died…at the Methodist hospital after a long illness.” According to her death certificate, the immediate cause of death was “generalized arteriosclerosis”, another significant condition was “fractured right tibia & fibula” which occurred during a fire at the Munsing nursing home in Fort Wayne on 1 November 1951. Jane was ninety-two years old when she died. She had been married for forty-eight years and a widow for twenty-nine. Her descendants (that I know about) make a list twelve pages long, including seven children, twenty-six grandchildren, sixty-eight great-grandchildren, and one hundred fifty great-great-grandchildren. I doubt I have records of even half of the third-great-grandchildren, and so I won’t include the count of those, but they are many. Most of her descendants still live in the Allen County, Indiana area, though one of her daughters, Chloe, relocated to New York State and lived in the Niagara Falls area for more than forty years.
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