Cyprian Tayrien. One of the old and honored residents of the County of Osage, residing 3% miles south of Bartlesville, Cyprian Tayrien has lived on his present property for a period of forty-five years, and has seen the country grow and develop under the activities and industry of the settlers. He was born in 1836, in Clay County, Missouri, a son of Enoch and Mary Louise (Borboney) Tayrien, the former a French-Canadian, and the latter a native of Missouri, and one-half French and onehalf Osage Indian.

Enoch Tayrien was an employe of the American Fur Company, and spent the winter months in Missouri, while in the summer seasons he traveled through the Rocky Mountains in the interests of his firm, and built boats in which to ship the buffalo hides down the rivers and streams in the days when the western ranges were covered with great roving bands of bison. On one of his trips to Missouri he met and married Mary Louise Borboney, who died in Clay County, Missouri, in 1837. He survived her for some years and passed away at St. Joseph, Missouri, which was then known as Black Snake Hills. There were three children in the family: Cyprian, the youngest, who was but nine months of age at the time of his mother’s death; Louise, who came to the Osage Nation after her marriage at Kansas City, Missouri, to A. B. Canville, a Frenchman, and died here about 1907; and another sister who was reared by an aunt in Missouri, and of whom all trace has been lost.

Cyprian Tayrien was taken to rear at the time of his mother’s death into the home of an aunt, Loraine Trubley, at Kansas City, Missouri, but after his sister Louise was married he went to live with her there. In 1850 he was sent to school at the Osage Mission, in what was then the Osage Nation but is now Neosho County, Oklahoma, and attended three years in all. He was eighteen years of age when he started upon his career as a clerk in the store of his brother-in-law, A. B. Canville, who was a merchant, and during the ten years that he was thus employed he gained an excellent mastery of the Osage Indian language. Mr. Tayrien was married the first time, in 1860, to Mary Louise Revard, who was one-quarter Osage, sister of Joseph Revard, who was mixed French and Osage as was also his wife. After his marriage he started farming, but his operations were interrupted by the outbreak of the Civil war, during which he rendered service as a scout for the Home Guards. When he had completed his military service, he again took up farming, and also worked in various stores kept by those who traded with the Osages, in which capacities his knowledge of the language stood him in good stead. He continued thus employed until the year 1870, when he settled on his present home on Sand Creek, 3½ miles west of Bartlesville, where he accumulated 500 acres of good land and placed 200 acres of this under a state of cultivation. After the granting of the allotments, Mr. Tayrien was left with 160 acres, with some surplus and alloted land, and now has about fifty acres under cultivation. His children now own as their allotments the land which was formerly included in their father’s homestead. When he first came to this property, Mr. Tayrien built a small log cabin, which continued to be his home for a long period, but as the years passed he put up other buildings, including a comfortable frame house, which has been his dwelling place for thirty years. He now has a modern farm, with good improvements of all kinds, and is looked upon as one of the practical, progressive and substantial agriculturists of his community.

Mr. Tayrien’s first wife died in Neosho County five years after their marriage, leaving two children: Thomas, of Pawhuska, Oklahoma; and Leona, who is the wife of Mr. Young and resides three miles northwest of Bartlesville. About the year 1 870 Mr. Tayrien was married to Miss Susan Captain, who was one-fourth Osage and three-fourths French, and she died after bearing him five children: Andrew, who is engaged in cultivating a farm in the same neighborhood as his father; Charles, a resident of Bartlesville; Jennie, who married Alexander Beggs, and is deceased; Ellen, deceased, who was the wife of John Himer; and Rena, who is the wife of John Michaels, of Bartlesville. In 1880 Mr. Tayrien was again married, being united with Emma Higbie, a native of Indiana. She was born in 1861 and was fifteen years of age when she came to Oklahoma with her father, who was a widower. Four children have been born to this union: John, who carries on farming near his father’s homestead; Mary, who married Ben Haney, of Pawhuska, Oklahoma; Lilly, who is the wife of James McCoy, a farmer of the Sand Creek locality; and William, who lives at home and assists his father.