Lawrence Byers

Portrait of Lawrence Byers

Portrait of Lawrence Byers 1872 – 1909

Gelatin silver prints

16×20 in.

Donated with the Byers Estate Lawrence Marshall Byers (1872-1909) was the elder child of Margaret Gilmour Byers (1842-1922) and Samuel Hawkins Marshall Byers (1838-1935), who formed a significant portion of the art collection of the Hoyt Sherman Place Foundation. While Major Byers represented the United States as Consul to Switzerland from 1869 to 1884, Lawrence was born, joined two years later by his sister, Helen (1874-1882), who died at the age of 8 from a tooth infection. He was educated in Europe, but returned to America to graduate from Penn College in Oskaloosa and Haverford College in Pennsylvania before starting the study of law at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. After earning a law degree with honors from Yale University, Lawrence established a practice in Des Moines where he was also the Chair of the law school at Drake University, but was soon offered a professorship in the law school of the University of Iowa. Just months prior to his planned marriage to Persis Rowell of Des Moines, Professor Byers began a trip to re-visit his former European home. While in London, he developed a wisdom tooth abscess which a dentist there tried to extract with his patient under ether anesthesia. Lawrence emerged well, but the dentist was not able to pull the tooth, so the lawyer returned for a second appointment. Unhappily, this time he did not recover from the ether, partly, it was said, because the abscess had led to sepsis, causing him to die at the age of 37. Eerily similar to the fate of Helen, who also died from a dental infection, the Major and Mrs. Byers had now lost both of their children. The Major had the body of his son returned to America where he is buried near his little sister in Forest Cemetery at Oskaloosa.