Letter written by William Cullen Bryant 

His is one of the twelve kids that belong to Barney Brundage Bryant & Julia Etta Beers 

UNITED STATES COAST GUARD AUXILIARY

 Miami, Florida

October the  29th 1968

Dear Orville & Lou,

We received your letter a few days ago and as we have been quite busy since did not get to answer it before now.

Was very much and agreeably surprised to get the nice letter from you. And will try to answer it the best I can.

We were up to Ft. Pierce over last Sunday and had a nice picnic there with Olive and Bertie Newell and Walt and us two.

As you may know Walt is living there in the Ft Pierce retirement Hotel and Olive lives in her own house south of there 9 miles from down town and Bertie & Newell live at Belle Glade where he is manager of McArthur Dairy there which is 80 miles from Ft Pierce and are 120 miles south in Miami.

We sold our place, in Balsam, N. C. before we left up there in Sept. as I am unable to take care of things outdoors there and also the altitude did not agree with my breathing and so it was the best thing for us to do.  Could not work the garden there.

Have some nice tomatoe plants here in our back yard and they are just beginning to get buds and blooms on so that we should have ripe tomatoes by Xmas for our table.   Have them in a 12 foot bed fenced and covered with 1 inch mesh chicken wire to keep the birds from biting the ripe tomatoes and spoiling them.

I will tell some of the things I know about past history.

My mother Etta Julie Bryant was one of 4 girls and one half brother (Daniel King) born to Richard and Dollie Beers who lived in Roehelle, Illinois in 1860.

Grandma Beers was married before she married Richard Beers and her husband died and left her with this boy Daniel when she married Richard Beers.   Their farm was 2 miles south of Roehelle and they had 2 very fine big apple orchards and sold apples on the market. That was before there were any railroads west of Chicago. They also made lots of cheese to sell and Grandfather Beers drove a team of Oxen with the wagon loaded with apples and cheese to Chicago 75 miles West of their home in Roehelle. And it took him about two weeks to make the trip each fall of the year.  He also drove about 60 miles south of Roehelle each fall to get a load of coal which was mined in Mendota Illinois. On one of these trips home from Mendota with the load of coal after dark the oxen got scared from a panther in a tree beside the road and run away and tipped the load over and Grandfather got his ankle very badly broken and was crippled the rest of his life from this and was never able afterward to follow a plow  the farm, and do many other things on the farm.

On account of his injury and owning over 200 acres on this farm he adoped a boy by name Will Brawman and then also had to hire several men to do all the work on the place and my father Barney Brundage Bryant was one of the hired hands and married my mother who was the 2nd girl of the family.

At that time about 1878, when Barney was 22 years old he arrived from Brockville, Canada where he was born. He had Two brothers one Walter the other Charlie who died when he was a small boy by a tree falling on him when it was cut down at their home there in Canada about 9 miles from Brockville.

Uncle Walter came from Canada along with Barney and went on to Cedar Rapids, Iowa where he learned the iron moulders trade and married there.                                                                                             

There were 7 girls in the Bryant family and Grandmother Bryant is buried there in Brockville.  The girls all finally came to  the United States and all were married in time and lived in various parts of the USA.

 Mary Bryant was a scotch Irish woman and Charley Bryant was  English.  Charley Bryant was a very poor citizen and drank to excess and was very lazy and they seperated when the children were all small and Grandma Bryant managed the farm and raised the  family. One of the girls married a shoemaker named Murphy and they lived in North Bay, Ontario and raised a family there.

Grandfather Richard Beers was Holland Dutch and very distantly  related to the Beers Diamond people who mined diamonds in South Africa.

Well for this time I cannot think of more to talk about so will close and if any of you are down this way we  would be very happy to have you stop here with us at our house.

Write when you have time,

With love,                                         

Your Uncle Bill and Aunt Anne 

 Contributed by:  Holly Yankovich