George A. Meyers
Though he has passed the psalmist's span of three score years and ten. Mr. Meyers is signally vigorous and alert and is active in business in the City of Ironton, Lawrence County, where he has long been an honored and influential figure in civic and business affairs and where abiding popular esteem is bis grateful portion.
Mr. Meyers was born in Germany, on the 5th of April. 1839, and he has been a resident of Ironton for more than half a century and where he is now successfully conducting a general plumbing business, with well equipped beadquarters at 18 South Third Street. To him must be accorded enduring honor for the gallant service given by him as a soldier of the Union in the Civil war, and in the "piping times of peace" his course has been characterized by the same intrinsic loyalty that prompted him to go forth and battle for a righteous cause. Mr. Meyers is a son of John J. and Christina (Roelky) Meyers, who, in the German Fatherland, were born respectively in the years 1817 and 1800. The father was a weaver by trade and also had much ability as a musician. He came with his family to America in the year 1844 and he attained to the patriarchal age of ninety years, his death occurring in the year 1907, his wife having been summoned to the life eternal in 1881, at the age of eighty-one years. They became the parents of six children—Charles II., George A., Christopher P. B., Herman L., Edward F. and Mary Elizabeth.
Upon immigrating to the United States, John J. Meyers established his home at Frederick City, Maryland, where he found employment at bis trade, his career in America having been marked by earnest and consecutive industry and the closing period of his life having been passed in Ohio.
At Frederick City, Maryland, George A. Meyers was reared to the age of seventeen years, he having been about five years old at the time when the family came to the United States. He attended the common schools of the locality and period and from his boyhood was associated with his father in work at the weaver's trade, at varying intervals, until he severed the home ties and came to Ohio, in 1857. He established his residence at Ironton, which was then but a village, though the center of considerable manufacturing and other activities in connection with the iron industry. He worked in the roller mills about three months and then entered upon an apprenticeship to the machinist's trade, in the works of the Olive Foundry and Machine Company, with which he remained four years.
At this juncture in his career Mr. Meyers put aside all other considerations to tender his aid in defense of the Union. In response to President Lincoln's first call for volunteers, he enlisted as a private in Company A, Eighteenth Ohio Volunteer Infantry, his being the first company to leave Ironton. under the three months' term of enlistment. The company was assigned to the work of guarding the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, in West Virginia, and Mr. Meyers continued in service until the expiration of his term, when he received his honorable discharge, on the 19th of August, 1861. The memories of the climacteric period of the Civil war are by him vitalized through his affiliation with the Grand Army of the Republic.
After the close of his military career Mr. Meyers returned to Ironton, and here he worked as machinist in charge of the old-time railroad locomotives until 1873, when he became associated with two other skilled mechanics in the establishing of a machine shop, under the firm name of J. H. Fisher & Company. He continued an active member of this firm until 1876, when he again entered railroad service, and was overseer of the round house for nearly twenty years, these relations being severed in 1894, when he felt that advancing age entitled him to less exacting occupation. In the year mentioned, Mr. Meyers purchased the plumbing business of the Cricher Brothers, and he has since continued the enterprise successfully, his fine mechanical ability and personal popularity having gained to him a substantial and appreciative supporting patronage.
In politics Mr. Meyers is a stalwart in the camp of the republican party and he served eleven years as a member of the city waterworks board.
On the 10th of June, 1866, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Meyers to Miss Margaret C. McKeun, daughter of Patrick and Rebecca McKeun, of Ironton, and of the eight children of this union live are living,—John G., Mary R., George P., Frederick W. and Samuel E. The names of those deceased were: Charles E., Florence and Emma. George P. is married and is employed as locomotive engineer on the line of the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton Railroad, with headquarters in the City of Cincinnati, where he maintains his home. Samuel E. is now a resident of New York City. Frederick W., who is engineer at the Ironton waterworks, married Miss Caroline Rudd and they have five children. Mary R., the eldest of the children, is the wife of Charles A. Woodworth. engaged in the insurance business, and they reside at Suffern, Rockland County, New York.
From "A Standing History of the Hanging Rock Iron Region of Ohio" by Eugene B. Willard, Daniel W. Williams, George O. Newman and Charles B. Taylor. Published by Lewis Publishing Company, 1916