Reconnecting with the past, the Shore-Styers Mill in Yadkin County

The really sad thing about our youth is that we miss opportunities that never come back around again.  At the time we don't even know what we are missing.

When I was growing up in Lewisville, NC, my uncle Joe Styers lived right beside us.  We even lived on Styers Street which wasn't too far from Styers Ferry Road.  Uncle Joe had lost an arm in a mill accident, but it didn't slow him down a lot.

Little did I know that nearly fifty years later I would visit the site of the old mill, the Shore-Styers Mill park in Yadkin County, where he lost his arm.

I wish I had taken the time to ask uncle Joe a few questions before he died, but I was more interested in playing neighborhood football and basketball or wandering the woods in those days.

All this poking around in genealogy  records reminds me of my  college life as a history major.  My mother, lived enough history that she wasn't particularly interested in talking about it.  She was more interested in the here and now as opposed to the musty past.

I did enough digging with the help of my college friend, Jon, to figure out that Samuel Styers who shows up on the 1790 Stokes County Census is a relative.  He's an important link since he is the one who moved down from New Jersey to North Carolina.  I would imagine he came right down the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road which came right by Big Lick (later known as Roanoke) and went on into North and South Carolina.

Eventually I can trace people down to my maternal grandfather, Walter Styers, the son of Abraham Allen Styers and Millie Ann Crews.  Interesting, the information also seems to lead back to Jost Georg Stier (born 1650) who married  Anna  Margrit Slaegal  in 1685 Gundersheim, Germany.

There is one thing for sure about genealogy.  You can spend an inordinate amount of time on it without even trying.