Born into an old Connecticut family, Mr. Tyler, who died in his 86th year, lived through many pivotal events of the American colonial and Federal eras, including the French & Indian Wars, the American Revolution, and the War of 1812. The only son of Gideon Tyler and the former Deborah Fuller, a direct descendant of a Mayflower pilgrim, his father died while he was still a toddler, leaving his mother a widow at age 20. She subsequently married James Warren, a prosperous widowed farmer and local militia officer. Raised in a large blended family on the Warren farm, young Gideon later married 16-year-old Phebe Elliott. The couple had a dozen children, and in 1795 left their comfortable Connecticut home to make the arduous journey with their large family to Central New York, eventually settling in Aurelius (present day Sennett).
By 1829 Mr. Tyler had been a widower for some 40 years, and died almost 33 years to the day after his youngest child and namesake became the first burial in Auburn's North Street Cemetery in July 1796. This youngster, an 8-year-old boy, was one of three and possibly four of the Tylers' offspring who did not live to adulthood: 4-year-old Deborah and 2-year-old Jacob Elliott Tyler were both interred in the Old Sharon Burying Ground in Connecticut many years earlier, and another son named William, about whom very little is known, may also have died in infancy. In 1789 Mr. Tyler was predeceased by his wife, who died at age 39 in Aurelius. At the time of his own death he was survived by their six sons and two daughters: Amos, Nathaniel, and William Gideon Tyler, who are also buried in this cemetery; Salmon/Solomon Tyler (father of James E. Tyler, a mayor of Auburn); Warren Tyler, who was buried in Kane County, Illinois; and Elliott, Deborah Tyler Doty, and Mary Polly Tyler Barnes, who were buried in nearby Throop, New York.
The illegible brownstone stele overlapping his white marble headstone in the photo marks the grave of Henry A. Tyler (c.1790-1817).