The Gates and Bryan Family Line

Of all the names on this website, the Byers line is the one that is most likely to have errors. This is because my ggrandmother Mary Katherine Byers, has been a dead-end for me. In her family's case, I have filled in prospective names to check out. The names earlier than Mary Katherine Byers in that line are, so far, just guesswork.

Mary Katherine Byers was my ggrandmother on my mother's side. I have not been able to go back beyond my mother's and my remaining aunt's recollections. Neither could tell me much about her family. I have photos of her after she married Elbert Severe Gates,(my ggrandfather) showing her in Gentry, AR and Seminole, OK.

2006 Genealogy trip: (While walking the Maple Grove Cemetery in Seminole, Oklahoma,) .....I wandered around and found a couple of Byers headstones (E.L. Byers b 6/30/1866 d 3/30/1915, Eliza Byers-Burton b1867 d1947, and her sister Fannie Byers-Brown b1863 d1939. The dates were right for being in Mary Katherine Byers' generation, even for being her siblings, so I asked my mother whether she knew an Eliza Byers-Burton. She told me a story about her rich "Aunt Lizie" coming to her father's blacksmith shop in oil-booming Seminole. Aunt Lizie liked her nephew(?) and would visit him without pretense. She probably had money because of oil rights. Mom said she would come in "all her finery" and sit in the dirty blacksmith shop and visit with her dad. Mom said her dad called the lady "Aunt Lizie," so I am beginning research to find a family with those names. Census records and a few personal records show a Mary Katherine Byers as being born in Arkansas in 1871. If this is the census information for Mary Katherine, and if it is actually her family, I don't know when they migrated into Oklahoma, (Indian Territory if it was early enough).

My Family History

• Surname List


• Index of Individuals


• InterneTree


• Sources