The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-09-27
NAMED AFTER BRYAN
MARYLAND HAMLET HOME OF
 NEBRAskAN's ANCESTORS.
Members of Bryan Family Once Were Important Persopages in Charles and Prince George Countfes-
 Bryans Also in Culpeper Go.

the humorous paragraphs "Bryans Town" Though 'Bryan's town." Nebr.. is a jest there is in Mary land a real Bryantown-in the back woods and the backfelds of that old State. Address a letter to Bryan- town. Md. and somehow or other. II will find its destination, says The Kan sas City Star. This Bryantown is In that long and isolated peninsula known as Southern Maryland. It Is in the county or Charles about midway between the Po- tomac and the Patuxent rivers and six miles from a railroad station. It Is hamlet of half a dozen families, and IS at least 200 years old.
 Bryantown, Md, takes it's name from the ancestors of the Democratic cam didate for the Presidency. The Mary land Bryans of other generations were important landholders in the county of Charles and the north adjoining county of Prince George. Bryans Point. op- posite Mount Vernon. and now used by the United States government as a station of the Fish Commission. be- longed, until five or six years ago, to one of this family.
 It Is a task which some genealogist, willing to examine the county and par ish records of South Maryland, must assume, if 1t Is desired to trace the re- lationshlp between William Jennings Bryan. of Lincoln and the founders of Bryantown, Charles County, Md. It is certainty, however, that the relation ship exists.
 The Virginia Bryans.
 William Bryan. the great-gandfathe of William J. Bryan, Is first heard of in Culpeper County, Va, county named after Lord Culpeper. who. with the Earl of Arlington, was co-grantee IL U..1 peper, had three children. One of these John, was married in 1907 to Nancy LII lard. They had ten children, and one of them was Silas Billiard Bryan. who was born at Sperryvil1e, culpeper Coun- ty. He went West in 1884, following the tide of emigration that set away from the old States in the early part of the nineteenth century It was this exodus in search for new, rich, and cheap lands that drained away much of the real red blood of the Potomac coun- try and gave such an asset in sterl- Ing men and women to Illinois, Mis- souri, and at length to the States be- yond.
 |. Sllas Lillard Bryan finally settled at Salem. ILL. where, In 1852, he was mar ried to Maria Elizabeth Jennings. These were the parents of William J. Bryan.
 It is certainty that the William Bryan who is found h Culpeper Coun- ty, Va, about l755-90 was of the Mary land Bryans. It may have been this Bryan or it may have been his father who left the home seat in Southern Maryland, and here ds where the geneal- ogist and his work would come in.
 In Old Charles County.
 Ch arles County and it's parent coun- ty, St. Mary, were "old" county when that part of Virginia out of which Gull peper county was carved was new, wild Indian country. A great many of the hustling people of "old" Maryland wont "Wset" soon after and many even before, the American Revolution. They went for cheaper land. Men counted their wealth in acres and hands" There were no great opportunities for investment in other ways. There were few turnpike companies In which one might buy stock, but there were no great railroad. steamship. telegraph, telephone, or lighting companies. Nor were there any big industrial concerns in which man by buying stock might share dividends. It was the proper thing to live In the country, in your own house. and on your own land. It was scarcely respectable to live in a rented house. You were then ten ant" and it was a word of reproach. Thus, men invested in land and push ed on to the westward as the Indians were thinned. tanned, or driven back At the time of the American Revolu- tion the Blue Ridge Mountains were West and the Alleghenies were far West There were few white settle ments in the Ohio Valley. but it was wild West country.
 Soo it was in this rush for Western lands that William Bryan or his father left the effete East in Charles County and emigrated to the West-to Gull peper County, in Virginia.
 Victims of Civil War.
 Not many of the old Bryan family of Maryland remain in the State. What remained of the family in Maryland at the outbreak of the civil war was inn poverished at its close. One branch of the family owned tracts aggregating 10000 acres of good land and negroes enough to till the various farms in the territories called Piscata way and Sur rattsville: The Bryan manor house. called Bryan Hall," stood two miles southwest of Surrattsville. the cross- roads where the Surratts kept a coun- try hotel then called tavern. before Mrs. Surrat went to Washington City to conduct boarding g-house. Old Mrs. Susannah Bryan and Mrs. Mary Sur ratt were friends, both being devout Church at Piscataway, and this con- nectien did the Bryan family no good. Three of the Bryan boys of this branch were Confederate soldiers. Pliny Bry- an became an aid-de-camp on the staff of Gen. Beauregard, and died of yell low fever about the end of the war He is buried in Magnolia Cemetery. at Savannah, Ga. Another of the boys. Robert, served in Billy" Dement'S Maryland Battery walked home after the surrender at Appomattox, and then went West. following the occupation of a prospector. He was murdered near Colfax. Gal. about twelve years ago. Another boy, William Page Bry- an was in the First Maryland Confed- crate Infantry, and now is living near a curious old settlement in Prince George County called "T. B."
 How to Get There.
 If you would visit Bryantown. take the popes Creek branch of the Pennsyl- vania Railroad and jump off at Wal dorf. thirty-o one miles down the penin- sula and thirty-one miles south of the main line of the railroads crossing from Washington to Baltimore. Wal darf is not an old name. but an old known as Beantown-from the family of Bean or Bayne, but after that coun- try was penetrated by the railroad in 1S72-73 the Maryland legislature changed the name of the place to Wal dork. Waldorf consists principally of two little hotels with two big lager beer signs. In front of each hotel a big bell swings on a post and Is tangled by a negro pulling the bell rope when meals are ready. There