Mr. Stewart,
I have a little info on some of the names from your
article, namely the president of the board of police, Leander R. Guy
and Michael Byrd who seems to be an Inspector of the elections to
be held at Tallaloosa in your latest article.
Leander and Michael were both in northwest Alabama
for quite a while before coming to Marshall Co. Mississippi. I do
not know what the full extent of connection between these two men
is or what would bring them to name children and grandchildren after
each other but I will state some of the places their lives touched.
I know Michael was present in NW Alabama by 1810 when
he is listed on the Madison Co, Ala. census Both are in the Franklin
Co., Alabama Militia in 1818; Michael served as a captain.
Both served as justices of the peace in 1823, Michael
in Franklin Co. and Leander in Huntsville, Madison Co., Alabama.
Leander was a candidate for lieutenant colonel of the
37th Regiment of Alabama Militia in May of 1825 at Tuscumbia.
Michael received a government land patent on Aug. 15,
1831 for 79+ acres in Franklin and this is about the last record of
him there.
He next is listed on the 1836 Marshall Co., MS tax
rolls and the July 1836 Minute Book you have been posting from.
Michael was my gggg-grandfather and was buried Nov.
2, 1857 at an abandoned family cemetery between Galena and Tallaloosa.
He was born between 1784 and 1787.
Leander was born between 1790 and 1800. According to
the 1840 Marshall Co. census he died in 1844. He was married twice
and one of his sons, John Byrd, married Mary Moore, daughter of John
B. Moore and Delilah Love whose allotment in the Chickasaw cession
was the section of land where Holly Springs is now. Their son William
Leander Byrd was governor of the Chickasaw in Oklahoma in 1888. He
also organized the first Choctaw-Chickasaw Indian Brigade in the Civil
War.
One of Michael’s other sons, Richard Byrd, received
a marriage license in Marshall Co. on August 8, 1836 to marry Martha
Reynolds Chisholm. Her husband, John Calvin Chisholm had died in Marshall
Co. about 1835 leaving her with two small children. She was appointed
guardian in court records dated July 6, 1836 and Leander Guy, Edward
Howell, and William Davis were appointed to appraise the estate of
Mr. Chisholm. This estate included slaves and Richard Byrd has court
records where he sold slaves to Leander Guy in 1843 for his father-in-law,
John Reynolds
From the Holly Springs Gazette, Colonel Leander R.
Guy died April 9, 1844 at his home in Marshall C. His beloved wife
had died only one month before.
Many other Guys are mentioned in different articles
about Marshall Co, who are probably related to Leander, such as “Brigadier
General Guy reviewed the Marshall Co. Militia once or twice a year
at the Old Waterford drill grounds about 1858,” or another “died
in the neighborhood of Tallaloosa on Sept. 27, 1842, General James
J. Guy, age 32.”
Employed in March of 1836 as an enrolling agent for
the Chickasaw removal was Col. William Richard Guy. Most of the agents
were disliked by the Chickasaw but they asked for W. R. Guy to be
retained. He married Jane McGee, daughter of Malcolm McGee and Elizabeth
Oxberry of the Choctaw.
Governor of the Chickasaw in Ok. in 1886 was William
Malcolm Guy, a descendant of Leander.
Needless to say you can see how the lives of these
two early Marshall Countians were tied to the Chickasaw. We can only
imagine the hustle and bustle that must have been going on with the
removal of the Chickasaw. Enrolling had begun in 1836 and by April
of 1838 some 750 Chickasaw had been settled at Boggy Creek in the
Indian Territory, one day to become Oklahoma.
Darrel Brown
401 East Oak Avenue
Como, MS 38619
