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 baseball 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.

Comments

[Conrad James Hunter]

Hello,

I'm a cousin who descends from your ancestor, Abraham Allen's brother, Samuel Augustus Styers. I've been working on and off on the family since the 1970s and came
across your postings via a google search.I've been trying to connect Samuel Sr. with
his origins in NJ for years without luck. Just wanted to say hello from Charlotte NC. If you ever find the link be sure to let me know. Are you familiar with the old story of the two Styers brothers whose sister was taken by the Indians? My grandfather told it to me as a boy. There was an Indian raid and the sister was taken with the war-party. The two brothers followed the war-party trying to rescue their sister but never found her. They came to a fork in the path and each went separate ways, eventually settling in NC.
Interestingly, There is a posting on the Styers genforum page from someone in the Pennsylvania area, siting a similar story. It was based on the "Wyoming Valley Massacre" during the revolution, in which British and their Indian allies raided up and down the Sussquehanna River (PA/NJ border)causing thousands of settlers to flee south. It's funny how the old wive's tales are often grounded in a real event. My grandfather said that his elders said the Styers family was originally from Austria.
The southern province in Austria is called Styria ( Sud Steyermark in german) and has a city called Steyr...