CHAPTER III
SOMETHING ABOUT THE LYON FAMILIES
The town of Derry in New Hampshire had contributed fourteen persons to the population of Kentucky, all of them by the name of Lyon. Colonel Duncan Lyon had gone there as a young man, and had made a very handsome fortune. But he died at the age of fifty, and bequeathed his property, consisting of a large plantation, which he had named Riverlawn, because it had a delightful lawn, with great trees scattered over it, though after the English fashion with none immediately in front of the large mansion, to his two brothers and the children of one deceased ten years before his death.
The elder of the two living brothers was Titus Lyon. He had removed to his new home eight years before, and he appeared to be the black sheep of the fourteen who had departed from their native town. He was a mason by trade, and had done fairly well in his former home at his business. He was one of those men who believed that fate or circumstances had misused him, as he compared his worldly condition with that of his eldest brother, who had departed this life leaving a fortune behind him; or even of his other brother, who had always been a prosperous farmer.
Titus had been informed by Colonel Lyon that there was an opening for a mason in the village of Barcreek, near which he resided, though he had not advised him to remove to that locality, and was really opposed to his coming. His discontent with his condition had induced him to change his residence to this far-off section of the country, probably with a motive which he concealed from both of his brothers. He had a wife, who was an excellent woman, belonging to a very respectable family, and five children, three girls and two boys, the latter already introduced.
The mason did tolerably well at his trade in his new home for a few years, though it was not a business at which a fortune could be easily made in that rural section of the country. It was not a prohibition State, which seemed to make it all the worse for the head of this family; for he had contracted the habit of drinking moderately when, as a young man, he had been a stage-driver, and it had grown upon him in his new home.
Titus had not become a sot, or even a very heavy drinker, before the death of his brother; but he regularly imbibed his whiskey, and to some extent his habit affected his manners and his morals. He had always appeared to be extremely devoted to the colonel, and even fawned upon him, during his residence in Barcreek; and he was always kindly treated and assisted financially when he needed help.
Colonel Lyon died suddenly at the age of fifty. He had never been married, and had no children to whom he could leave his property. About a year before his decease he paid a visit of a month to his brother Noah, the youngest of the three brothers, in his native town. The latter was a substantial man, who held a very respectable position in the town; he had been somewhat distinguished among his fellow-citizens, and had been the incumbent of several town officers.
Noah Lyon was forty years old at the time of his brother's death, with a good woman for a wife, who was in every sense a helpmate to her husband. They had two children of their own, a boy and a girl, Dexter and Hope. Cyrus, a fourth brother of the Lyons, had lost his life in a freshet in Vermont, where he had settled as a farmer; and his wife had perished with him, leaving two small children, Artemas and Dorcas. He had not left property enough to pay his debts; but Noah promptly adopted the little ones, and for ten years he had cared for and supported them as though they had been his own.