The Meyer Family Reunion was held this past summer for the first time in over 50 years. Hundreds of descendents of John Adolphus George Meyer and their spouses gathered in Port Burwell.
John Adolphus George Meyer was born in Baden Baden, Germany about 1750 and came to America as a surgeon-major under General Burgoyne of the British Army where he tended Hessian Troops (mercenaries in the British Army). After the defeat of General Burgoyne by General Washington at Saratoga, N.Y. in 1777, he settled in New York City and since he was unmarried and his mother had died in Germany, he had no reason to return to Germany. Ten years later, he was driven out of New York as a United Empire Loyalist. He had married a Boston girl of New England Puritan stock, and they went to Montreal, Canada, where he practiced medicine and raising children. He and Hestor had 4 boys and 4 girls. He died about 1825 in Montreal.
George Edmond Meyer, third son of John Adolphus George Meyer, MD, moved from Montreal by boat in September 1821 along with his mother, brother and sisters to Fort Erie and took up farm lands on the shore of the Niagara River, Grand Falber A.F. just south of the Canadian end of the present international R.R. Bridge. At what was later known as Bridgetown and now forms a part of the City of Fort Erie.
George married a girl named Mary Raymond from a southern family then living in Fort Erie.
George moved west from Fort Erie and in 1853 was among the first to settle in the northern part of Houghton Township, Norfolk County. He was a carpenter and millwright and spent 7 years at Fort Erie learning his trade of repairing mills and building the huge wooden cog wheels. As soon as his 7 years apprenticeship was up, he got the urge to roam and finally ended up in Houghton Township (one of the frontiers of settlement at that time). He played a prominent part in the founding of Glenmeyer a few years later. He was the village's first postmaster and supposedly the community was named after him.
It was there he met and married in 1856 Emeline Franklin, a direct descendant of Benjamin Franklin. She was the daughter of Dan Franklin and Rachel Hazen. George and Emeline had a large family of 6 boys and 5 girls (two of the children died in infancy) All of her children were born in Glenmeyer, Ontario.
George and Emeline's second son, Clarence Herbert Meyer, was my great-grandfather.
I have been researching my Meyer lineage, inspired by my mother's cousin, Herbert Winrock. Herb has been the keeper of the family tree, compiling and adding to 'the scroll' since I can remember.
We would welcome any information about our Meyer ascendents. Also, I have been researching my father's family, Arthur John Boyce, from England, and my husband's family, Steven Norman Thorne, also of English descent.
|
