*According to the 1900 US Census, Joseph P. Byers lists his year of birth as 1840.
He was living in Sugar Loaf Township during the 1900 Census.
He listed his profession as a farmer. He could read and write.
At the time of the 1900 Census, children still living with the couple were:
1. James W. Byers(b. Dec 1874 in Ark)
2. Robert F. Byers (b. July 1882 in Ark)
3. Mary E. Byers (b. Mar 1884 in Ark)
4.Amoe M. Byers (b. Feb 1886 in Ark)
5. Ora M. Byers (b. Aug 1888 in Ark)
6. Justin N. Byers (b. Feb 1893 in Ark)

Source: "The 1900 US Census. Sebastian County, Arkansas. Sugar Loaf Township. 5 Jun 1900. 4B."
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The following information is from Justin Watkins

Sebastian County, AR, Deed Book 1 [Greenwood], p. 352, 19 July 1876, Deed of Trust Joseph Byers to J. H. Clendening $450
That whereas I am justly indebted to J. A. Tilbets, Frank Park and B. Baer as Trustees of Thomas Lanigan and William B. Sutton in the sum of $450 that being a part of the purchase money for the E ½ of the NW ¼ of Section 28, TWP 7N, Range 32W situate in Sebastian County and State of Arkansas, this day purchased by me which indebtedness is evidenced by my two promissory notes bearing even date herewith each for $225 and payable respectively 1 January 1878 and 1 January 1879, with 10% interest
[Release of deed of trust filed at Fort Smith, AR, 29 September 1888]

Sebastian County, AR, Deed Book 1 [Greenwood], p. 517, 19 July 1876, Deed Thomas and Jane Lanigan, W. B. and Mary L. Sutton and the State of Arkansas to J. P. Byers $500
The E ½ of the NW ¼ of Section 28, TWP 7N, Range 32 [in Sebastian County; this is the same land described in the above deed of trust]

Franklin Co., AR [Ozark], Book H, p. 135, 22 December 1877, Certificate of Purchase D. P. Upham, U. S. Marshal, to J. P. Byers $250
This is to certify that at a sale under execution this day made by me in the case pending in the District Court of the U.S. for the Western District of Arkansas, wherein Benedict Hall & Co. are plantiffs and John W. Cunningham & Co. are defendants, Joseph P. Byers became the purchaser of Lot 4 Block 13 in the town of Ozark, County of Franklin, State of Arkansas … and of the SW of SW Section 26, T7N, R28W, for the sum of $10 all on a credit of three months from the date hereof.

Federal Land Grant, 1 June 1882; The United States of America to Joseph P. Byers (Franklin Co., AR)
The SE ¼ of the NE ¼ of Section 20 in TWP 6N of R25W of the Fifth Prime Meridian, in Arkansas, containing 40 acres [This land is in Logan Co., AR]

Crawford Co., AR, Deed Book H, p. 593, 15 Jan 1884 J. P. Byers and wife to J. L. Savage
One lot, Block 4, Town of Alma

Sebastian Co., AR [Greenwood], Deed Book 3, p. 363, 14 September 1885 Joseph P. and Clarissa C. Byers (Enterprise, Sebastian Co., AR) to Martha J. Thomas
$1000 already paid and $1300 to be paid
The following described lot of lands situate in the County of Sebastian & State of Arkansas, to wit:
The E ½ of the NW ¼ of Section 28 TWP 7N of Range 2W, together with all the appurtenances and privileges thereunto belonging

Sebastian Co., AR [Greenwood], Deed Book 3, p. 513, 27 October 1885 Washington W. and Elizabeth Cacy to J. P. Byers
$1500
The following lands lying in the County of Sebastian and State of Arkansas, to wit:
The SW ¼ of Section No. 3, TWP 4N of R31W, containing 160 acres more or less

Franklin Co., AR [Ozark], Book N, p. 228, 14 December 1885, Quit Claim Deed Joanna Edmondson (Franklin Co., AR) to J. P. Byers (Crawford Co., AR)
$500
The following described lands situated in Franklin County, Arkansas, to wit: The SE ¼ of the SW ¼ and the NW ¼ of the SE ¼ all in Section 35, TWP 10, R29

Sebastian County, AR, Mortgage Book 3 [Greenwood], p. 544, 27 January 1887, Mortgage Mrs. M. J. Thomas (Enterprise, AR) to J. P. Byers (Chocoville, AR)
$140
E ½ of the NW ¼ of Section 28 TWP 7N of R32W
This sale is on condition that, whereas, I am justly indebted unto the said J. P. Byers in the sum of $1403.95, evidenced by my note of even date and due 1 November 1887. It is further agreed that in case any of the improvements on said land are removed or destroyed or timber sold or used otherwise than for home consumption, this note becomes due and payable at one and the conditions of this conveyance matures.
Now, if I shall pay said moneys at the times and in the manner aforesaid, then the above conveyance shall be null and void, otherwise to remain in full force. And in case of non-payment, then the said grantee or his assignee shall have power to sell said property at public sale to the highest bidder for cash at the Court House in the town of Greenwood, Sebastian Co., AR, public notice of the time and place of said sale having first been given 20 days …
Note: Received of C. C. Stalcup the sum of $500.00 to be credited on Note of mortgage given by Mrs. M. J. Thomas to J. P. Byers, Recorded in Record Book 3, p. 544

“Joseph signed his last will and testament on 7 May 1913 and it was filed for probate 21 October 1913, Sebastian Co., Arkansas.

Joseph Pinson Byers served in Company C, 18th Alabama Infantry, CSA. He enlisted with his brothers Samuel and Robert in the front yard of his Uncle Zeke Moore at Cedar Grove (now Leeds), Alabama, and John joined later. They served from 24 July 1861 to December 1862 and then deserted.

According to family tradition, Joseph had a bad temper and struck an office. He was jailed and thought he would shot, so his three brothers and a friend helped him escape.

In 1864, Joseph and his brothers enlisted in Company G, 1st Alabama Cavalry, USA. Joseph served from 10 March 1864 to October 1865 and was honorable discharged as a Sergeant. His U.S. service record states that he was 6’ tall with a fair complexion, blue eyes, and dark hair. When applying for a pension, Joseph brought his father’s Bible to prove his birth record.

Another family tradition states that Joseph and his three brothers were evading capture as deserters and came to a plantation in Mississippi. Being hungry, they went to the kitchen door. A young girl came out with some corn pone in her apron for them. She warned them to go quickly as Confederate soldiers were in the front part of the house. Joseph kissed the young girl, Carrie Turner, and told her that he would be back for her when the war was over.

After Joseph was discharged, he lived at Sterrett, Shelby, Alabama, from 1865 to 1867, then he moved to Mississippi in 1868 and lived at Good Hope, Lena, Mississippi until December 1869. After that, he moved to Arkansas, living for one year in Franklin County and the rest in Sebastian County, according to the pension file. Joseph and Carrie eloped in Lena, Leake, Mississippi, and ran away from her brothers who chased them. Three former slaves from the Turner plantation went with Carrie voluntarily.

Joseph and Carrie rode double on horseback, but they had to walk and push Carrie’s large trunks to cross a frozen river. They traveled to Little Rock, Arkansas, where they were married.

The Turners disowned Carrie and would not correspond with her for the first thirteen years of her marriage. Later, she was forgiven and was even reinstated as an heir to the Turner estate.

Carrie never regretted leaving the plantation and going to the wilderness of western Arkansas with Joseph. They lived in a one-room log cabin at first. They tried to lease land in Indian Territory at Cowlington, LeFlore Co., OK, in 1874. However, Indians set fire to the Byers’ house and farm buildings.

Joseph and Carrie eventually settled in Sebastian County, Arkansas in 1882. There, they had a prosperous farm in Sugar Loaf Township at Mansfield and he was known as “Big Papa.” Joseph Pinson Byers was a deacon in the Baptist church at Mansfield for many years, almost gaining lifetime status.

In 1897, their son John H. Byers returned to LeFlore Co., OK, as a Baptist missionary, pastor, and founder of many churches.

When the children were young, Carrie used a patent medicine salve to ease the discomfort of dirt in her eyes. The salve blinded her. “Aunt Mary,” who had been Carrie’s companion and helper in Mississippi, took care of Carrie’s children. In later years, Carrie regained some of her vision, but remained partially blind.

Carrie outlived Joseph by twenty years. The day he died, she went into mourning and wore only black for the rest of her life.”

“Eventually Joseph and Carrie settled in Sebastian County. They owned many acres of land and were prosperous. Their property was located in Sugar Loaf Township, approximately six miles southwest of Mansfield. Many of the buildings stood long enough for current generations to remember them. It was sold in 1964 after the death of Pinson Byers, who had inherited the farm from his father. All the buildings were removed by the new owners.

Joseph’s house had been built in 1889. It was a white frame home with a porch extending across the front. It consisted of six large rooms with high ceilings. One fireplace heated the living or sitting room. Natural gas from their own land heated other rooms and provided for cooking and overhead lights. The original homestead extended just east of Buggy Hill Cemetery and south approximately a mile.

Carrie was a part of Pinson and Bertha Byers’ family during the latter part of her life. She was called Ma.” “She was petite and was reputedly of American Indian descent. She lost her eyesight by using eyesalve on her eyes to soothe them from irritation caused by dirt. In her early eighties, she regained some of the sight she had lost.”

On 1 Jun 1882, Joseph P. Byers of Franklin Co., AR, bought forty acres in Logan Co., AR. He was a treasurer of the Buggy Hill Baptist Association. J. P. Byers was a messenger from Pilgrim’s Rest Baptist Church to the 1890 Concord Baptist Association meeting. He was also a messenger from the same church to the 1893 Buckner Baptist Association meeting. Three of Joseph Pinson Byers’ sons tapped into a capped well that was not commercial and this was how they got their gas. This supplied gas to Pinson and Amos Byers’ houses as well from 1919 to 1959. Joseph Pinson Byers died of mouth cancer in 1913 and his estate is in SEBASTIAN CO., AR, PROBATE FILE #1123. His widow Carrie Turner Byers died in 1933 and her estate is in SEBASTIAN CO., AR, PROBATE FILE #3226 (both in the Greenwood courthouse, South Sebastian Co., AR).

From Joel S. Watkins, Jr.:
Joseph Pinson Byers
Joseph Pinson Byers was 6 ft. 1 in. tall, dark haired and handsome. When the Civil War broke out, the Byers had been mountaineers for three generations. They owned no slaves and sympathized with the Union sympathizers. James K.’s mother, Ary Ann Burch, later encouraged her sons to join the Union forces. In 1860, JPB married Lucinda Adams in AL. LaVonne Byers visited some of the Byers’ relatives in AL some years ago. When she told them who her ancestor was, one of locale Byers spoke up and said that JPB was the Byers that “run off and left his wife when he signed up.” After the war was over, according to one of his pension statements, JPB said he had received a letter from someone before he married Carrie saying that Lucinda had died.

At the time of JPB’s enlistment, there was considerable peer pressure to enlist in the Confederate Army and, in spite of their feelings about slavery, Joseph Pinson and brothers Samuel, James and John all enlisted Co. C Alabama Infantry, CSA on 21 July 1861, along with cousins and friends neighbors.

But it didn’t last. In December 1862, Joseph escaped while under arrest for desertion. He had deserted twice before but had been caught each time. His 3 brothers went with him. They wandered around, hiding from Confederate officials. Norma Garbert says in one story, Joseph P. visited his aunt’s home in Mississippi and met a young cousin. He kissed her and said he would be back after the war. The story may or may not be true, but he did marry the young lady.

On 10 Mar 1864, Joseph Pinson enlisted in Co G, 1st Alabama Volunteer Cavalry, and USA. His other brothers also enlisted in Co G but not all at the same time. Norma Garbert included a number of stories about Joseph Pinson and his brothers in her book on the Byers. If you don’t have a copy, she may still have a few.

The 1st Alabama Volunteer Cavalry was a Union regiment made up of southerners. The 1st Alabama Volunteer Cavalry was in the Union Army of the West under the command of General William Tecumseh Sherman. General Sherman was born in Ohio and was the Superintendent of the Louisiana State Seminary and Military Academy in Alexandria LA when the South seceded. The school would later be moved to Baton Rouge, LA and renamed the Louisiana State University.

Although a graduate of West Point, he, like U.S. Grant, resigned his commission after the Mexican War. He was in California for a time and became a bank president. When the Bank failed, he then tried several other occupations without too much success. Grant had a similar history. When the Civil War broke out, Sherman resigned as Superintendent and offered his services to the Union Army. He later became Grant’s subordinate in the Union Army of the West. When Grant resigned, he recommended Sherman as his replacement and Lincoln agreed.

For reasons I have not been able to discover, General Sherman selected the 1st Alabama Cavalry for his personal bodyguard. Joseph fought through the Atlanta Campaign, then during Sherman’s March to the Sea and was in Raleigh NC when the war ended. The 1st Alabama Volunteers returned to Alabama and Joseph was discharged as a sergeant on 20 October 1865. Soon after the end of the war, James K. Byers had Joseph P. Byers had their pictures taken in Alabama. These two pictures are shown in Plate II and were probably were taken in 1865 not long after JPB’s return home from the war.

Sherman was later sent to the Southwest U.S. to fight Indians. For a period of time, he was stationed in West Texas. He didn’t like the hot Texas summers very much, later saying that if he owned Texas and Hell, he would rent out Texas and live in Hell.

After he had his picture taken, JPB went, among other places, to Dallas, TX in 1867 A little later, he turned up at the farm of his aunt, Elizabeth Byers Turner and her husband, George Washington Turner, near Goodhope, Leale Co. MS. One of their daughters was Clarissa (Carrie) Calsey Turner. Joseph apparently worked on the farm for a while and the two fell in love. Clarissa’s brothers don’t seem to have been too keen about Joseph’s courtship of their sister. They were veterans of the CSA and one had been a Captain. In any event, Joseph and Carrie elected not to face her brother’s objections to their plans to marry and eloped. Family tradition (Norma Garbert) says that three former slaves accompanied them. With Carrie’s brothers in hot pursuit, Joseph and Carrie hastened over frozen ground dragging a cart with their belongings in it all the way to the Mississippi River. Then they crossed Mississippi into Arkansas where they couldn’t be reached, then went all the way to Little Rock where they were married in December, 1869.

They first settled near Poteau, LeFlore Co, OK where their first child, Francis J. Byers was born in a one-room log cabin. Francis apparently died young. Then Indians burned them out so they moved to another one-room house near Enterprise AR south of Ft Smith. Five children, John Henry, James Washington, Ara Elizabeth, Printest Pinson and Robert Forest Byers were born at the Enterprise farm. Granddad told me the Arkansas River froze over one winter and wagons could be driven across. He also said the house had a dirt floor. It must have been rather cozy with two adults and five children. It is probably worth noting that Sebastian Co and perhaps other counties in northwest Arkansas were strongly Republican as was Granddad and probably the rest of his family. This is in sharp contrast with the majority of Arkansas counties that were strongly Democratic at that time.

Sometime between Forrest’s birth on 7 July 1882 and Mary Elsie’s birth 17 March 1884, they moved to Chocoville, Sebastian Co, AR. Chocoville was just a Post Office located at a Trading Post where Chocoville Rd., the North-South county road that passes by the old farm place, dead ends against State Highway 96 between Mansfield and Hartford. According to La Ora Byers Barnett, Joseph Pinson’s granddaughter, at that time Mansfield was just a field owned by a Mr. Harper. Mansfield was founded in 1888 according to LaVonne. The Chocoville Post Office is shown on early maps and appears in early land documents. The stage line from Mansfield to Harford passed by Pilgrim’s Rest Baptist Church located adjacent to Buggy Hill Cemetery where many of our Byers kin are buried.

Plates III-VI include pictures of Joseph, his family and some of his kin taken after the family moved to the Chocoville farm.

At first JPB and his family lived in a single room house. This was the “Old House” that many of us remember. I don’t remember the exact dimensions, but it was roughly square and 16-20 ft on a side. It also had a half loft.

Mary Elsie (Maymie), Amos Marshman, Ora Maude and Justin Nirum were born on this farm. See Plates I and II for photos of Joseph Pinson, Carrie, their children and some of their grandchildren.

Joseph Pinson was not only big, but very strong. Justin Byers, his youngest son, said he was also the toughest man he had ever known. Justin was pretty tough, himself, so he ought to know. Justin, about 17 years old, was working in a field with his father one day and mouthed off to his father. His father, who must have been about 70, hit Justin so hard that he was knocked out. When he came to, he saw he was several rows over from where he had been standing. Their argument had been over mules. Joseph P. had told Justin he was treating the mules too hard.

Everyone referred to Joseph Pinson as “Big Papa.” My mother, Eva Byers, said all the grandchildren were in awe of him. Meda, I think, told me that the Byers were thought to be rather clannish. According to La Ora (pronounced “Lay Ory), after the children married, John, Forrest, Joseph Pinson, Printest Pinson and Maymie all lived along the East-West road that goes through the Byers Home Place. Jim lived one mile north on the Mansfield-Hartford road (according to La Ora Byers Barnett). La Ora also said that all families were on the same party line.

Carrie, whom everyone called, “Maw”, was still alive when I was born. Dad lost his job in Poteau in 1932 six weeks before I was born and we lived at the Byers place for several months or perhaps a year. Gran and Granddad had two rocking chairs with leather seats. They must have been fairly old, because the sand which couldn’t be kept out of the house had gradually eroded the rockers to the point that there was a six inch flat place on the bottom of the rockers. Carrie would rock me and sing to me, rocking back and forth, going clumpety clump, clumpety clump. I have one of these rocking chairs but I don’t know who has the other.
Carrie must have liked music, too, because there was an organ against south wall in the middle bedroom. You can go to the part of this booklet where I talk about the house and see where it was on a house plan that I have included. In Plate IV the organ is behind several of the siblings. Plate IV also includes a photo of a similar organ that I took in a local carwash. You alternately pump the pedals to provide air to the organ pipes. The knobs above the keyboard can be pulled out to produce a variety of sound effects. I used to play it. There were a couple of keys that no longer worked and only one pump worked, but it was a lot of fun to pick out tunes. There are some stringed instruments in the photo. I don’t know whether they belonged to the Byers or not.

There was a Baptist Church at next to the Buggy Hill Cemetery called Pilgrim’s Rest Church but later became known as Buggy Hill Church. All our kin in the area attended that church. John Henry byers preached there at one time. He also baptized people in Cherokee Creek, but not on Byers property as far as I can tell. Joseph Pinson, Carrie, and three children who died young are buried in the cemetery there.

Gran Byers told me that not long after she and Granddad married, they went to a hanging in Ft. Smith with Joseph Pinson, Carrie and several kin and friends. The Oklahoma Indian Territory at that time was a lawless place. As Uncle John said, it was a very sinful place. The Indian Territory was administered in Ft. Smith. Horse thieves and other felons from the Indian Territory were jailed, tried, and if guilty, hung there. The reason they went was because six people were to be hanged. Many of the trials were presided over by Isaac Parker, who came to be known as “the hanging judge.” Isaac Parker would have been the judge who sentenced the men mentioned in the previous paragraph to be hanged.

They loaded up two or three wagons with people, bedding, food and water. The distance was about 30 miles. You could make the trip in a day with a good horse, but wagons didn’t do much more than five miles an hour and it took them a day and half to make the trip. The hangings were in the morning. After the hangings, they ate lunch, loaded up, headed back and got home the following afternoon.

John Wayne won an Oscar for his portrayal of Rooster Cogburn in “True Grit.” Rooster Cogburn was a sometime marshal and bounty hunter tracking down criminals in the Indian territory during the tenure of Isaac Parker. A young girl from Dardanelle, AR hires him to track down the man who killed her father. It’s a neat movie. If you have never seen it, you can get a CD on the internet for a few bucks. Buy one. You will enjoy it. Ignore the scenery, though; the movie was shot in California.