SAMUEL D. ROYER, representative citizen and retired farmer of Newberry Township, residing on his farm of sixty-two acres, which lies just east of the Brethren Church, north of Bradford, was born on a farm in Union County, Pennsylvania, June 3, 1840, and is a son of Jacob and Susanna (Myers) Royer, both of whom died in Union County.

Samuel D. Royer was reared in his native place and obtained a good common school education. Both he and his brother, J. G. Royer, a prominent retired citizen of Mt. Morris, Illinois, engaged in teaching school after their own school days were over. Samuel D. taught only four months and then came to Darke County, reaching here in the spring of 1864, since which time until he retired he engaged in farming. J. G. Royer was a teacher for fifty years, following that profession in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, and when he finally retired from the educational field he was president of Mt. Morris College at Mt. Morris, Illinois. Samuel D. Royer was married in the year following his settlement in Ohio and located first on the old Jerry Katherman farm in Darke County, which he operated for five years, when he moved on the Jacob Senseman farm, southwest of Bradford, and lived there for two and one-half years. In August, 1873, he moved to his farm in Newberry Township that is now owned by his daughter and husband, and came from there to his present place, January 31, 1907. This farm he has greatly improved, all the substantial buildings having been erected by himself.

Mr. Royer was married in Darke County, Ohio, in 1865, to Miss Mary Mummert, a daughter of Joseph and sister of John Mummert, and they have one child, Catherine. She married D. I. Hoover and they have two children: Mary Etta and Harley, both of whom are graduates of Mt. Morris College of the class of 1909. Mr. Hoover was a native of Darke County. He is a man of considerable prominence in this section, being one of the directors of the Bradford Home Telephone Company, a director in the Bradford National Bank and one of the trustees of the Brethren Cemetery. For twenty-four years Mr. Rover has been a minister in the Brethren Church and few men are better known or more highly esteemed through Miami and Darke Counties.