EYRE, Jehu, colonel in the Continental army: b. 10 Jan. 1738; d. July 1781. Eyre is the name of a family that for seven centuries has been famous in the English history, the founder having come over the sea with Wil liam the Conqueror. The legendary account states that when, at the battle of Senlac, or Hastings, the Norman leader, early in the con flict, was knocked by a missile off his horse, he lay senseless on the ground, until a soldier stepped forward and loosened his visor, which gave him air. Thereupon William, reviving, asked for his benefactor and knighted him on the spot, giving him the name of geyre— one of the variants of a word that is older than English spelling. In the feudal division of land, this Norman Baron le Eyr — whose crest was a leg in armor, cooped and spurred, he having lost a leg in the battle — was given a fief in Nottingham, the manor house being at Rampton. The family is now extinct in the peerage. The first American ancestor, George Eyre, coming from Worksop, settled at Burlington, N. J. and married in a family of Friends. He had three sons who, in the Revolution, became or °Hickory) Quakers and were prom inent in the service of the Continental Con gress. Coming to Philadelphia to learn ship
building, two of the sons married sisters, the daughters of their master.
On the fall of Fort du Quesne and its re naming after Pitt, Jehu Eyre traveled with a party of his mechanics to build boats for the transportation of the King's forces down the Ohio. While there, he learned about cannon and artillery, visiting also Braddock's Field— then piled with the bones of the slain. After the Lexington news, he organized in Philadel phia a military company, which guarded Inde pendence Hall. Besides providing boats for the crossing of the Delaware, he took part in the battle of Trenton and Princeton ; in which latter, his younger brother, Colonel Benjamin George, was aide to Washington. In 1777, Jehu was made colonel of an artillery regiment which served at Brandywine, wintered at Valley Forge, and garrisoned the forts on the Delaware, while Proctor, with his artillery, was away on Sulli van's Expedition (q.v.). He left five children. Consult Keyser, 'Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (1879).