Does anyone have an individual or family portrait of Luther? Welcome to post it here!

Headstone and birth record photos by Shirlee Eddy

In 1805, LUTHER was a grown young man, who probably had had to hire himself out to others many times during his mother's periods of hardship. It is probable that his education frequently was sacrificed to "bringing home the bacon." It was the beginning of his wanderlust, which would take him to Collins, NY with his brother, James, and possibly to Broome, County, NY with his brother Asa.

From: "History of the Original Town of Concord, Erie Co. NY," by Erasmus Briggs:
"Many people were coming to Concord, N.Y. in 1810 when James and LUTHER TYRER of Wendell, Mass. arrived."

page 697:
"Statement of David Wilber:
"It took us three days to move from Hamburg to Collins: we staid the first night at Jesse Putnam's who lived on part of the farm that Lewis Trevitt has so long since occupied.

"We staid the second night at James Tyrer's whose house or shanty stood on the Genesee road, on lot three, township seven, range eight, and was the first one we had seen since leaving Putnam's. The shanty was so small that the whole company could not sleep inside, so Jehiel Albee proposed that he and the other young men should sleep upstairs. Accordingly Jehiel Albee, John King, Arnold King, Henry Palmerton and John Williams slept on top of the shanty."

page 746:
"From the statement of Isaac Woodward:
"I have heard my father speak of his frequent encounters with bears when he first settled there, but they were pretty well thinned out before my remembrance. I never saw a live bear in the woods, but I remember having seen James and LUTHER TYRER carry a bear they had just killed past my father's house."

"Soon after the Tyrer brothers came to Erie County, the War of 1812 broke out. Many loyal citizens of Concord responded to the call for soldiers, including brothers James, Jr. and LUTHER TYRER."

page 637:
"Statement of Benjamin Albee, 2nd:
"Later when the services of the settlers were needed as soldiers, my father, brother Jehiel, Darius Crandall, James Tyrer, Henry Palmerton, Luke Crandall, Stephen Peters, Jesse Frye, Simeon Watterman, Luther Pratt, Phineas Orr, Elisha Cox and others, went out on the "lines" and I was about the only man (and I was only sixteen) left in our neighborhood to look after things."

LUTHER was listed as a veteran of the War of 1812, in the Index to War of 1812. The bounty lands warrant number is 405. LUTHER received no pension, only bounty land, and he is listed as serving in the regiment raised by Capt. Elias Hull or Hall (possibly a retired officer of the American Revolution). LUTHER's bounty warrant application was written Oct. 19, 1850, only two weeks following the passage of the "Act Granting Bounty Lands to certain officers and soldiers who have been engaged in the military services of the United States" passed Sept. 28, 1850.

It states:
"LUTHER TYRER, aged 62 years, a resident of Collins, in the state of New York, who being duly sworn, declares that he is the identical LUTHER TYRER who was a private soldier in the company commanded by Capt. Hull [Hall] in a regiment of volunteer infantry of one year troops, commanded by Col. Philetus Swift in the War with Great Britain declared by the United States on the 18th day of June 1812. That he volunteered at Concord on or about the last day of May 1812 [his muster card says he enlisted on the 14th day of May] for the term of one year, and continued in actual service in said war for the term of six months until the 16th day of November 1812."

"Following which he enlisted for five years into the 5th Regiment, U.S. Infantry, as will appear by the muster rolls of said company. That he had no discharge. That he was, after his enlistment last mentioned, mustered into Capt. Wm. H. Waterbury's Company [aka Wharterby in the "Documentary History of the Campaign: Niagara Frontier in the Year 1812."] Lieutenant Hook was one of the Lieutenants of the Company. That after his last enlistment for the term of five years, he continued in actual service in said war for the term of about eleven days, when he was taken prisoner near Fort Erie in Canada on or about the 27th day of of that month, November 1812."

"That he was taken to Fort George in Canada, where he was retained a prisoner over two months, when he was paroled and taken to the American side of the Niagara River and reported himself to his officers at Flint Hill near Buffalo, that he was sent to Greenbush and from there to Boston when he was paid three months pay. That he there obtained a permit to return home until called on. That he arrived home the 21st of April 1814, where he remained during the war and never was exchanged to his knowledge. That he never received any bounty land."

"In the 1840's he was reportedly living in Indiana or Ohio, where his children from his second wife SARAH were born: ELISHA, Isabella and Robert. In 1848, he signed a petition with his brother Asa, for a new road to be built in Dodgeville, WI, and where his children ELISHA, Robert and Isabella were raised by their uncle Asa and Aunt Chloe Tyrer. [Hiram and James L. Tyrer were also sons of Luther.]

Then sometime before 1850, Luther returned to his land in NY.

Luther filed on 30 June 1851 for his bounty land warrant and patent at the Dubuque Land Office, for 160 acres, warrant No. 405, on the Act of 28 Sept. 1850, registered and received, No. 197.

He located the land on the SW quarter of the SW quarter of Section #28 in Twsp 86 [?] north, of Range 3 East in the District Lands subject to sale at the Land Office of Dubuque, amounting to 160 acres. This land is subsequently [now] a part of Jackson Co, IA. The closest village is Cottonville. I wonder whether Sarah, Elisha's mother, is buried here? Probably not, since it was stated in Isabella's obit that her mother died when she was age 3, which would have been 1845, before the land act was passed.

There is a Tyrer buried here in Cottonville, and that is Lucinda Tyrer Jameson, who was the daughter of Luther's brother, James. The chances are now good, that Luther sold his 160 acres to Lucinda's husband, Porter B. Jameson, when he left Iowa.

LUTHER TYRER died during the course of the Civil War, in Dodgeville, on June 3, 1863. His son, Robert, was home on medical furlough in the month of May, due to an injury to his eye which left him blinded in that eye. In two separate War Pension affidavits, it is said that Isabella copied the family birth and death dates from her father's family Bible. We do not know whether this Bible remained with her, or whether, as was the custom of the time, the Bible was interred with LUTHER's body in the grave at the Eastside Cemetery in Dodgeville, where his headstone is yearly decorated with a flag on Memorial Day.