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TYSONS OF MUHLENBERG COUNTY, KENTUCKY: Pond River Country

8 1/2 x 11 Laminated Hardcover, 310-Page LIMITED EDITION, Wt. 3 lbs.

First print published in 2003 by:

Greenacres Publishing Co.
1324 Gamble Lane
Nortonville, KY 42442.

Tysons of Muhlenberg County,Kentucky is a historical writing about a way of life during the early years and is filled with both local and national period history. What began as a genealogy search for author, Patty Tyson Wilson, turned into a very interesting series of biographies filled with stories about the life and times of those not forgotten folks who lived in Muhlenberg County in the part commonly known as Pond River country. Some of the biographies are very colorful and make very delightful reading for all who love adventure and history mixed with a bit of romance.

It begins in Mid-Sixteen Hundred when Mathias Tyson's ancestors came to America from Europe and settled in Accomack County, Virginia. Around 1695, Mathias Tyson moved his family to North Carolina where his great-great-great grandson, Ezekiel Tyson, was born ca. 1794. In 1812, with both his parents deceased, Ezekiel at age twenty headed Westward with a group of pioneers across the Appalachians and put down roots in Muhlenberg County around 1816,where he married Nancy Anne Mercer, daughter of Thomas Martin Mercer.

The book contains eight biographies and spans four generations of Ezekiel and Nancy Tyson's descendants and kinfolks. It is set in a time when it wasn't uncommon for cousins to marry, some of which were first cousins. Covered within the pages of this fascinating book are several wars, which gives a grasp to the horror the men from Muhlenberg faced during the Civil War and the last days of WW II in Europe. Also told in detail is the life of inmate, Billy Tyson, while incarserated during the 1890s at the state prison at Eddyville, Kentucky.

Learn how the lives of the Tyson-Mercer descendants intertwine with the other families who lived in Pond River country. Share their problems and happy moments through the biographies and family histories of these families: Tyson, Mercer, Bennett, Durall, Gill, Loney, McNary, Matheny, Moore, Rickard, Stewart (Stuart), Uzzle (Uzzell), and Watkins families.

The era starts to come to an end in the early 1940s when coal companies begin to buy the land in Pond River Country, which forces the folks to sell and move away.

Interfaced in the stories of this marvelous book are old photographs, cemetery histories, maps, genealogy, and the Ancestry Chart of the author, Patty Tyson Wilson.
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HERE ARE A FEW EXCERPTS FROM THIS EXTRAORDINARY BOOK OF HISTORY:


"After the Indian raiding subsided, new settlers flooded Westward. It was at this time, during late Seventeen Hundred, that many of the new home seekers settled in what is now known as Muhlenberg County, Kentucky.

As in most neighborhoods during that era, the settlers in Pond River country intermarried with their neighbors. Since travel of any distance was rare, they naturally found themselves linked socially with their neighbors. By the second generation, marriage between cousins wasn't uncommon and many were first cousins."



"Bill Tyson was the third son of Ezekiel and Nancy. At age thirty-one, he married the love of his life, seventeen year old, Elizabeth "Bett" Mercer, who was the daughter of his mother's brother, Gillis Mercer. To this union came 16 children. The Tysons struggled to make a living on their 300 acres, each year borrowing against their crops. But, as the price of tobacco dropped in the 1890s, it became harder each year for them to clear their debt and in the end their mineral rights, which unbeknownst to them were worth thousands of dollars, were deeded over to their shrewd creditor to settle debts that only amounted to a few hundred dollars."



"About six miles north of where the young widow, Dorcas Uzzell, lived was the McNary Plantation located near the edge of the Pond River bottomlands. This was the home of the wealthy McNary family.

Dorcas was twenty-eight years old when she became romantically involved with young William McNary who soon became a state representative. Dorcas did not fit into the life style of the young statesman and his wealthy, well educated and refined family."



"Returning home from the Civil War, Silas Tyson went calling on the thirty-four year old widow of his army comrade and cousin, Private Phillip Mercer. Silas, who was then twenty-three years old, was much older than his years. A few months later, he and Martha, daughter of Dorcas Uzzell and William McNary, were wed.




"Drinking, selling homemade whiskey, and his love for a beautiful young woman would be Billy Tyson's downfall. In the fall of 1885, he was twenty-one when he met and fell passionately in love with Belle Durall. He was doomed from the moment they met."


"Joe Rickard met Dovey Tyson while working as a farm hand on her father's 300-acre farm. The young couple were soon wed."


"Coal Mining: In the early 1940s, coal companies began buying up the land in upper Pond River country, which forced the folks living there to sell and move away. Most of the mineral rights beneath their land had been signed over many years before to settle debts owed against crops."



"In the spring of 1944, the inevitable happened, twenty-seven year old Roy Tyson, who was the father of three children, received his draft notice. He put his prospering trucking business on hold and went off to War.

"War is Hell!" He wrote in May 1945 to his wife from a battlefield in Europe. "I fought all the way across Germany to Czechoslovakia and it was hell for I saw German and American soldiers killed. For over 40 days men fell all around me. I didn't know how much longer I would make it."

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