Lazarus John Bryars
1775 - 1827 (~ 52 years)-
Name Lazarus John Bryars Born ca. 1775 South Carolina 
- This date of birth is based on the conjecture that Lazarus was about twenty-five years of age when Lazarus or Charles, his two oldest sons, were born.
Gender Male Political 07 Apr 1798 Mississippi Territory organized after Spain cedes its claim from 31° N latitude to 32°28' North in the Treaty of Madrid. Residence 1809 Petitioners, Mississippi Territory [1, 2] Political 21 Dec 1809 Baldwin County, Mississippi Territory Baldwin County created. Political 27 Dec 1809 Baldwin County, Mississippi Territory Appointed Justice of the Peace Military 09 Apr 1810 Baldwin County, Mississippi Territory Commissioned militia Captain, 8th Regiment Residence 1811 Baldwin County, Alabama [3] Political 01 Aug 1811 Baldwin County, Mississippi Territory [4] Bryars signs a petition on behalf of Joseph Stiggins. Mary Stiggins was the third wife of William Weatherford. Her brother George (b. 1788) was the Creek Indian Agent from 1831 to 1844. Joseph was Scots and the childrens' mother Natchez. - "To the Honorable Legislature of Mississippi Teritory, Governor and Council:
The Humble Petition of Joseph Stiggins Showeth that having formerly resided in the Creek Nation amongst the Indians and marrying an Inddian woman by whom I had Children, that I moved to the Country and Edicated and brought up to the Cristian Religion, and finding it Disagreeable that by the law of our Teritory that they can't have their oath though borne of a free woman. Your petitioner prayeth that they may be Released from that Disability the same that their oldest brother, George Stiggins, was by his own petition. Viz: Mary Stiggins, Susannah Stiggins, Nancy Stiggins and Robert G. Stiggins their poserity this Indulgence your petitioner thinks he justly Intitled to whilst he is forever Bound to pray.
/s/ Joh Stiggins
August 1, 1811"
Source: Record Group 5 (Legislative Records, Territorial Archives), Volume 26, Petitions of the general Assembly, 1810-1816, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, Mississippi.
Military 30 Aug 1813 Fort Mims, Baldwin, Alabama The Fort Mims Massacre - Led by Peter McQueen and William Weatherford, Red Stick or traditionalist Creeks attacked the hastily built stockade at the home of Sam Mims.
Mims was a back-countryman and teamster who had worked for trader William Galphin before relocating to the Tensaw to run a ferry across the Tensaw and Alabama Rivers. The ferry served whites that traversed the Upper Nation on the way west to Natchez.
The Creeks killed over 250 people who had taken refuge there in advance of the strike. Many of the inmates were Creek metis who had taken a stance of accommodation, or at least indifference, toward the fledgling United States. The talwa had been allowed by the Upper Nation to diffuse communal tensions between these two factions.
There is no evidence that Bryars was at Mims' at that time. He is not mentioned as one of the survivors. Bryars filed a claim for reparations for the loss of livestock and personalty as a result of the raiding that accompanied the massacre.
Fort Mims Massacre
30 August 1813
Fort Mims Reenactment
25 Aug 2012Residence 1816 Mobile County, Mississippi Territory [3] 
Mississippi Territory 
Tensaw Country (1818)
Philadelphia: John Melish,
Tensaw Country (1822)
Baltimore: F. Lucas
Showing Montpelier and TatesvilleDied 1827 Baldwin County, Alabama - 20 Dec 1827, Mrs. Mary Bryars appears in court as the administrator of the estate of Lazarus J. Bryars. Orphans Court Book, Baldwin County, Alabama, page 44.
Baldwin County, Alabama (1825)
Philadelphia: H.S. Tanner, 1825Person ID I0642 Dickinson Last Modified 28 Jan 2022
Father Lazarus Bryars, d. ca. 1787, Charleston District, St. Paul's Parish, South Carolina Mother Ann Conrade Family ID F8204 Group Sheet | Family Chart
Notes - Bryant alleges that in 1797 Lazarus Bryars married an unknown Sizemore of North Carolina. It was not until her death that Bryars left North Carolina. (Most researchers, however, have Bryars haling from South Carolina. None of these claims are sourced nor are they vouched for here.) Since the Sizemores were a well-known Tensaw Creek family and intermarriage was socially advantageous, the question arises whether Bryars took an Indian wife.
The Sizemore family was established in the Tensaw by the late eighteenth century. According to Vickery and Travis, Arthur Sizemore was the progenitor of the Baldwin County Sizemores and haled from from North (others say South) Carolina. If not of mixed ancestry himself, Arthur's presence in the Creek-controlled Tensaw country is explained by his marriage: His wife, Mary "Polly" Bailey, was of European-Creek origin and related to the McGillivrays, Tates, and Moniacs, among others. As Karl Davis explains in The Founding of Tensaw: Kinship, Community, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Creek Nation, the Tensaw community north of Stockton was established by the Creeks sometime after 1783 to facilitate closer contact with Spanish Pensacola (and the the recently relocated British firm, Panton, Leslie). Marriage of Creek women to European men was encouraged as a way to consolidate ties to the south. And with the British loss of the colonies, the Tensaw drew expatriate Tories who were sympathetic to Creek designs in the Gulf.
The Sizemores had ten children but none were contemporaries of Bryars; nor were any married to a Bryars. Mary's will (dated 1860) lists children as follows: 1. Cynthia Padgett; 2. Amelia Stiggins; 3. Celia Colbert; 4. William Sizemore; 5. Absolom Sizemore; 6. Nancy Moniac; 7. Samuel Sizemore; and 8. Betsy Tarvin.
Thus, the question of whether Lazarus Bryars had married into one of the Tensaw Creek families is subject to slim circumstantial evidence. Lazarus endorsed a petition filed by Joseph Stiggins (a back-country trader who had taken a Natchez wife) to allow his children to take oaths. His son, Red Berry, gave his daughter Annie the middle name of Moniac- a well-known Tensaw Creek surname. And a grandson, Frank, married into the Tunstall family for which the Creek heritage is unquestioned. [5, 6]
Children 1. Lazarus John Bryars, b. 1799, South Carolina , d. 1832, Baldwin County, Alabama (Age 33 years)+ 2. Charles Edward Bryars, b. 1801, South Carolina , d. 1843, Stockton, Baldwin, Alabama (Age 42 years)Last Modified 9 Sep 2017 Family ID F0194 Group Sheet | Family Chart
Family 2 Mary McDonald Married 1808 Children + 1. Ethelbert Lazarus Bryars, b. 24 Jun 1810, Baldwin County, Alabama , d. 2 Feb 1853, Baldwin County, Alabama (Age 42 years)+ 2. Stephen Bryars, b. 1811, Baldwin County, Alabama , d. 1856, Baldwin County, Alabama (Age 45 years)Last Modified 24 Aug 2011 Family ID F0215 Group Sheet | Family Chart
Family 3 Mary Smith Married 04 Oct 1816 Mobile, Mobile, Alabama [7, 8] Children 1. Green Berry Bryars, b. 11 Jul 1814, Baldwin County, Alabama , d. 19 Jul 1873, Baldwin County, Alabama (Age 59 years)2. Red Berry Bryars, b. 1819, Stockton, Baldwin, Alabama , d. Jan 1870, Stockton, Baldwin, Alabama (Age 51 years)Last Modified 24 Aug 2011 Family ID F0219 Group Sheet | Family Chart
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Event Map 
Residence - 1811 - Baldwin County, Alabama 
Military - The Fort Mims Massacre - 30 Aug 1813 - Fort Mims, Baldwin, Alabama 
Married - 04 Oct 1816 - Mobile, Mobile, Alabama Died - 1827 - Baldwin County, Alabama = Link to Google Earth Pin Legend 
: Address
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: County/Shire
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Documents 
Bryars, Lazarus John
1810 Baldwin County Census. Mississippi State and Territorial Censuses, 1792-1866. Microfilm V229. 3 rolls. Heritage Quest.
Bryars, Lazarus John
Estate
Bryars. Lazarus John 
Bryars, Lazarus John
Histories 
Colonial Mobile: An Historical Story, largely from Original Sources, of the Alabama-Tombigbee Basin from the Discovery of the Mobile Bay in 1519 until the Demolition of Fort Charlotte in 1821
Hamilton, Peter J., A.M. (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1898)Coastal Encounters: the Transformation of the Gulf South in the Eighteenth Century
Brown, Richard F. Brown, ed. (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2007)
Preview
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Sources - [S336328] Mississippi Census, 1805-90, Jackson, Ron V. , (Accelerated Indexing Systems, comp.. Mississippi Census, 1805-90 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 1999. Original data: Compiled and digitized by Mr. Jackson and AIS from microfilmed schedules of the U.S. Federal Decennial Census, territorial/state censuses, and/or census substitutes.).
- [S122] Territorial Papers of the United States, multivolume, Clarence Edward Carter, et al., ed., (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1937), http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000495370., 5: 735.
Petition of Inhabitants East of the Pearl River, May 1809. - [S010247] Alabama Census, 1810-1890, Ron V. Jackson , (Provo, Utah: The Generations Network, Inc., 1999).
- [S336326] McIntosh and Weatherford: Creek Indian Leaders, Griffith, Benjamin W., Jr., (Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1988), 22.
Biographical information on George Stiggins is found here. - [S336331] The Tensaw Country North of the Ellicot Line 1800-1860, Charles E. Bryant, Ed.D., (Bay Minette, Alabama: Lavender Press), 240.
- [S336337] Coastal Encounters: the Transformation of the Gulf South in the Eighteenth Century, Brown, Richmond Forrest, ed., (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 81-98.
- [S336357] Marriages of Mobile County, Alabama, 1813-1855, King, Clinton P., Meriem A. Barlow, (Baltimore, Maryland: Genealogical Publishing Company, Inc., 1985), 19, 155.
- [S336384] Colonial Mobile : An Historical Study, Hamilton, Peter J., (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin, 1910), 557.
- [S336328] Mississippi Census, 1805-90, Jackson, Ron V. , (Accelerated Indexing Systems, comp.. Mississippi Census, 1805-90 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 1999. Original data: Compiled and digitized by Mr. Jackson and AIS from microfilmed schedules of the U.S. Federal Decennial Census, territorial/state censuses, and/or census substitutes.).