Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1879-12-25
A FALL FROM GRACE.
Tl.s social wreck OF \ Family That q Few
Years Ago sailed ON the TOpmBsi Wave OF
Prosperity

The Muscatine journal Of yes,er.
day quotes this item with comm u rs.
The following from Fit Dodge
G1setts will be special interest to
many at our readers. Col. Byam.
was at the head Of the go called
Temperance Regiment (Tweniy
iourth) which rendezvoused on Mus
catlne Island during the war, and at
that time no one bid fairer to win an
enviable name than he. His down
fall aud the sad fate of his daughter,
caused as il evidently was by his
improved pecuniary circumstances,
illustrates the saying Of Pope;
Satan now's grown richer than OF yore,
And ten pts by making ri CHI, not making poor
Jennie Byam has not been forgot
ten by her old associates IN Fort
Dodge. The Byam family in its days
Of sunhsiue was one of the first in the
city. Col b. sm was man OF consid
cradle ability, hal left the Methodist
m ni-try to enter The army in com
mand of an Iowa regiment, and
though an arrant coward, hal never
been officially disgraced. lie came
here with money and didn't hide il.
a spendd stable of horses, a private
race course, fine carriages, and a
lovely N TX white pony upon which
Miss Jennie, in her gay girlhood
dashed over the city, are among the
luxurious appointments which the
public will remember. Byam was
Register Of the United States land
Office, and afterwards conducted a
private land agency on large scale.
Little by little, for time, and stead.
lily, the Byam family lost caste, influ-
eree ana .respectability It's gait
was fast but wearing. The money
went and came moi; luxuries were
dismissed by the present necessities.
Whatever business ability and natural
talent Byam possessed, were fast
smothered by drink. The boys went
from fast TO reckless and then to the
devil. A year OF so ago a business
man of TT. Dodge met Jennie in a
railroad car, an unmarried girl OF 20,
with a babe in her arms, aud to the
question "where is your father nowy"
received the petulant answer, my
whole family have gone to the dogs. I"
Her career was a brief one. \ run.
away scrape which resulted in her
being brought home the next day,
was the first exploit, and she left
town soon after, when the family
broke up. She came back again to
live as a mistress in the home OF her
girlhood, stunning the faces and
forbidden the homes OF her associates
of other days. A child, a baby boy,
was the issue Of this intimacy, and
she, of course, chung TO it, after
its father had shaken her Off She
wandered with il, common presti
tute, travelling with hurrying footsteps
toward the dreadful end she has now
reached. Last week, at Webster
City, strangers took all that was
mortal OF Jennie Byam in a rough
box, and drayman carted it uuuat.
tended to the potter's field, where it
was buried without prayer or
tear, at the expense of the county OF
Hamilton.
This is the simple, sad story of
Jennie Byam's short career. A tai
ented, handsome, but impetuous and
self.wiled girl in a home of luxury
thus she was known to our people
but few years ago-we see her die
an outeast, and buried pauper.
The Byam boys are, nobody knows
and nobody cares where. Colonel
b am is in Rochester, New York,
gutter drupkard,