Saturday, May 14, 2011

63. Mary Ann Elizabeth B. Bryan Isler (c1805-1860)

There was a student named Mary Eliza Bryan at the Mordecai school for two-and-a-half years, mid-1815 to the end of 1817. She may have been from Franklin Co., NC, and the adult attached to her account is called "Genl. Bryan." A William Burlingham also left money for M. Bryan, according to the school's ledger for October 1815. "M. Bryan" was among the students who used the services of a dentist in January 1816.

Looking to the online family history sources: Mary Ann Eliza B. Bryan was the oldest child of Joseph Hunter Bryan Jr. (1782-1839) and Sarah Burlingham; William Burlingham seems to have been her grandfather. Mary Eliza's father was in the War of 1812, and served in the North Carolina legislature, as a trustee at UNC, and finally as a Congressman from North Carolina. (His brother Henry was a congressman from Tennessee.) Joseph died in Tennessee.

Mary Eliza was born before 1808 in North Carolina, and died 13 February 1860 in St. Louis, Missouri. She had two much younger brothers, Joseph (b. c1815) and Elisha (b. c1824). Was she sent to the Mordecai school because there was (or would soon be) a new baby in the house in 1815? Mary Eliza married Dr. Jesse Isler (c1796-1865) in 1821 (she would have been about sixteen years old), in Granville County, NC, and they had at least five children, the last born in Tennessee.