Miscellaneous - Lyon Family Reunion, 1872

Lyon Family Reunion

Bainbridge Republican, Feb. 3, 1872

 

The family and descendants of Charles and Betsey Lyon, held their annual reunion at the house of Joel C. Lyon, in the town of Bainbridge [Chenango Co., NY], on the 25th ult.  The past and present history of this aged couple deserves more than a passing notice.  Mr. Lyon was born in Westchester county, in this State, in 1784, and in company with three brothers, emigrated to this county about the year 1805, and settled on adjoining farms in the western part of this town.  The whole section in which they settled was then a howling wilderness, broken here and there by small clearings, and the log hut of some daring pioneer, who had left the abodes of civilization to share the dangers, the hardships and the excitement of frontier life.  The old house is still standing in which Mr. and Mrs. Lyon went to keeping house--and cooked their food the first season of warm weather by building a fire against a huge stump until stones could be gathered in the woods, and a chimney erected.  In that house (18x19 ft.) they reared a family of twelve children, nine of whom are still living, with their descendants who hold positions of prominence and respectability in community.  Mr. Lyon is the last survivor of the four brothers, and has outlived most of the early settlers around him, and is still living on the old farm on which he first settled, and though nearly eighty-eight years old, and his companion eighty-four, they both retain all their faculties in a remarkable degree, and are apparently well, hale and hearty, and stand at the head of a family of seventy-four; and although a portion of the family are scattered over the different States and Territories of the West, yet a large percentage of them gathered at the house of one of the sons on Christmas day in friendly intercourse, and passed a pleasant and profitable season; and after discussing the merits of the well loaded table of their generous host, departed to their various and distant homes, until the return of the set day brings them together again, to review the memoirs of the past, and strengthen the ties of the present.  J.W.S.