Pictured is the old Byrd/Naylor Home in West Union as it appears today.
(By Stephen Kelley from the People’s Defender 1983)
As we mentioned last week, John Naylor grew to manhood on his father’s Gift Ridge farm. About 1854 he moved to Bentonville and, following his service in the Civil War, removed to West Union. In 1866, John with his second wife, Emma Jane, bought a story and a half frame house on the southeast corner of North and Cherry Streets. The Naylors paid village undertaker, William V. Lafferty, two hundred and fifty dollars for their new home. John Naylor lived in this house until his death in April 1917 at age 94. The old home passed out of the Naylor Family’s possession in the mid 1920’s.
The Naylor’s West Union home dated back to 1817 when it was constructed by Phillip and Phebe Robins, early land developers of the village. The home was bought the following year by Charles Willing Byrd, member of the politically prestigious Byrd family of Viginia.
Charles Willing Byrd, was born in 1770 to William and Mary Willing Byrd at Westover, the family mansion located on the James River near Richmond, Virginia. This Magnificent plantation home is considered a model of Georgian architecture and remains in the Byrd family today. After receiving his education in Philadelphia, Byrd located in Kentucky as a land agent for Senator Robert Morris, financier of the American Revolution. In 1799 he was appointed Secretary of the Northwest Territory by President John Adams. He continued in this capacity until 1802 when he was appointed Acting Governor of the Northwest Territory succeeding General Arthur St. Clair. Byrd served as acting governor until the state of Ohio was formed in March 1803. Following this established of Ohio, he was appointed as federal judge by President Thomas Jefferson. He maintained this position until his death in 1828.
Byrd moved to West Union following a ten-year residency at Buckeye Station near Manchester. Buckeye Station, you will remember, is Ohio’s oldest braced frame house, erected in 1797 for Nathaniel Massie, brother in law to Judge Byrd.
Byrd and his second wife, Hannah, apparently did no care for their new West Union home (he later wrote that residing in a frame house was like living in an icehouse in winter, an oven in summer and would product “derangement of the bowels’”). After less than one year, the Byrds sold what later became the Naylor home and moved to a brick structure on Mulberry Street. In 1823, Charles and Hannah moved to Sinking Spring in Highland County and built the large brick residence that is now the Wylie Funeral Home.
