Maj. Samuel H.M. Byers, died 1933

BYERS, GILMOUR

Posted By: Iowa Old Press
Date: 3/18/2009 at 21:08:06

Last Survivor of Sherman's Staff Dies

Los Angeles, May 27 - Funeral services were held in Los Angeles yesterday afternoon for Major Samuel Hawkins Marshall Byers, 95 years old, soldier, diplomat and author. His death Wednesday was due to pneumonia. He was the last surviving member of Gen. Sherman's staff.

A life that spanned the growth of the United States through the development of territories into states, the Mexican war, the California gold rush, the Civil war, the coming of the railroad and the rise of the nation to world leadership was the lot of Major Byers.

He fought in the Civil war and then, when the inseparability of the Union was assured, turned to foreign lands to serve in the consular corps. Out of his varying experience he evolved much poetry and prose.

A Pennsylvanian by birth, an Iowan by migration and a Californian by choice - Major Byers symbolized the westward expansion of his country. He was born in Pulaski, Pa., and when he was 14 his parents joined the tide of immigrants who sought fortunes in the middle west. The Byers family settled at Oskaloosa, Iowa, which remained his home for many years, although his travels prevented him from living there for any length of time.

He had taken up the study of law, but when the Civil war broke out, joined the Fifth Iowa Infantry as a private serving four years in the army. He was wounded at Champion Hills and captured by the Confederates at Chattanooga. After being in several southern prisons, including the notorious Libby prison, he escaped from Columbia, S.C., and rejoined the Union army. He was attached to General Sherman's staff in the final days of the drive through the South and was selected by General Sherman to carry the first news of his victories to General U.S. Grant and President Lincoln.

It was while he was in the southern prison camps that Major Byers, then an adjutant, began his rise to fame in literature with the sone, "The March to the Sea," later adopted as the title of General Sherman's campaign.

At the close of the war he was given the rank of major. He returned to Iowa and in 1869 married Margaret Gilmour of Pontiac, Mich. A son and a daughter , both now dead, were born to this union.

Major Byers later was appointed consul at Zurich, Switzerland. His successes there caused his promotion to consul general in Italy and later he was returned to Switzerland in the same capacity.

His pen was not idle during his foreign service. His prose work included "Switzerland and the Swiss," published in 1875, and "Iowa in War Times." He also published a book of poetry, "The Happy Isles," in 1884.

In 1893 Major Byers was recalled from the consular service by President Cleveland and he returned to Oskaloosa to settle down to a pursuit of his literary tastes. Numerous articles and poems from his pen were published in periodicals and in 1911 he published a war story, "With Fire and Sword." A year later he completed an account of his adventures in diplomacy with "Twenty Years in Europe."

He was busy collecting his poems during this period and had them all published in a single volume. His next major work, in 1914, was "A Layman's Life of Jesus."

For several years Major Byers spent his winters in California, returning to Iowa for the summers. Finally in 1918 he transferred his residence to Los Angeles and started a collection of his later poems.

These were published in one volume, "In Arcadia," when the author was nearing 90. Hailed as his greatest poetic work was "The Bells of Capristrano," first published some years before but included in this volume.

Major Byers spent his old age quietly amid his books and in writing in his house on Sunset Place in Los Angeles. "Two squares a day," and a good book, a little writing, some mild form of exercise gave the keen-eyed warrior-poet more than the average share of longevity. And at 92, just for a laugh at Old Father Time, Major Byers gathered 92 of his friends and "threw" a birthday party in a Los Angeles cafe.

~Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
Fairbanks, Alaska
Saturday, May 27, 1933

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