Dyas, David

David Alexander Dyas was born in 1786 in Dublin, Ireland. He married Frances Mary Lavinia Pigott in 1809 and their first four children were born in Ireland by 1818. The Dyas family was one of many Irish families who emigrated to the United States in the early decades of the nineteenth century seeking to make a better living in the New World. Dyas and his brother-in-law William Pigott came to America together on a ship departing from Dublin before the rest of the family. They entered New York City on a ship called the Anne on 5 May 1817.

By April 1818, Dyas had settled in or around Loudoun County, as his account with the Masons of Raspberry Plain began and ended in that year. David and Frances Dyas welcomed two more sons on American soil by 1820, meaning that Frances and the older children must have joined David in the United States by 1819.

Sometime during the 1820s, the Dyas family began their migration westward, living in St. Louis, Missouri, and Galena, Illinois, before settling in Iowa. The Dyases were among the first white pioneers to settle in the Iowa territory immediately following the forced evacuation of the Native Americans living there. By 1833, the entire family had settled near Bellevue, Iowa. In April 1836, either David Dyas or his son David Jr. was elected as justice of the peace in Dubuque County, a mark of the family’s prominence in their new community.

Dyas’s wife Frances died on 19 April 1845 and was the first to be buried in the Dyas-Brady family cemetery. David Alexander Dyas joined his wife in the family cemetery when he died on 31 October 1863 at seventy-seven years old.

By Annabelle Spencer