It isn't really known how this family spelled their surname, was it O'Brien, O'Brian or O'Bryan?

The family tradition tells of a young William whose family immigrated from Ireland around 1830 to Canada for religious freedom, being devout Catholics, and arrived at Quebec where the dominant religion is practicing Catholics. So devout was John and his wife Mary that their two oldest sons were priests and two of their daughters were nuns. They told young William (born 19 March 1836, English Ontario, Canada) that he too was going to be entering the priesthood. Young William thought otherwise and one night when he was around sixteen ran away from home. He dropped the 'O' and added a 't' to his surname, thus changing his surname from O'Bryan to Bryant.

Next appearance of William is when he married the young widow Mary Jane (Stacy/Stacey) Beachley on 5 June 1864, at Black Hawk, Gilpin County, Colorado. Mary Jane's family was from New York state where her father, John Stacy, was a cobbler who followed the York & Erie train line being established in the state. John removed his family to the wilderness of Wisconsin where he changed his occupation to that of a trader operating a trading post and trading with the Indians of the area and southern Canada. Supposedly William and Mary's wedding was a big social event being the first wedding in the gold mining mountain town. Records to help establish this date burned when the county seat of Central City had a major town fire a few years later.

The first husband of Mary Jane was William Beachley who married his bride back in Wisconsin. The couple joined her parents in a wagon train of ox pulled wagons traveling to the Colorado gold mining towns. Mary Jane told stories of the women on the wagon train scolded her for climbing the small hills covered in tall grass and rolling down giggling and in the first stages of pregnancy. Upon arriving in Colorado, the Beachley and Stacy families settled in the mountains near Rollinsville on the county line between Gilpin and Boulder counties. May Jane reminisced years later about their arrival in the area where she found the native Indians were more friendly then the settlers. She began birthing her first child in the wagon's canvas canopy, but switched to under the wagon. When asked why she switched she replied, "The canopy was useless for it leaked terribly! Might as well have room under the wagon for I couldn't get any wetter!" After her son, John Albert, came into the world with the help of midwife Indian squaws, she sat in the rain on a dead tree log. A few months later her husband died of an illness.

Sometime in the next two years while her parents were involved in placer mining in Excelsior Gulch, William Bryant was working on designing and building ore mills for the various mining fields. John assumed the surname of his step-father William Bryant.

Four years later their first child together was born, William Cullen, on 4 August 1864, at Black Hawk, Colorado. The Bryants lived here for two years then moved to 4 Mile Canyon located on a branch of Boulder Creek.

In the 1868 Boulder Territorial Fair the Bryant family won many awards, William won first place for his mining pick-axe, and Mary Jane for a special minited coin that said, "Best equestrian Riding," and several placing in sewing. The couple also were known at the Fair for having a 'short order' kitchen, where good food could be ordered.

William was hired while visiting Central City on mining business, was hired by the Cincinnati millionaire A.D. Breed, to design and build a processing mill for silver ore at the little mountain town of Nederland. Breed had just purchased the Caribou Silver mine located at 10,000 feet, seven miles above Nederland. Breed also gave the Bryant family land next to the mill to build a house on. This was in the year 1871.

During early spring of 1873 plans for the event of the visit of American president the former Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, was making a world tour and a visit to Colorado's richest mining town was on the list. Central City was a few years older than a decade, and dubbed the 'The richest square mile on earth;' gold was mined everywhere and was so common that it wasn't a big deal. The backers of the visit and event planners included industrialist A.D. Breed, owner of the Caribou mine, suggested the idea of 'a silver side-walk in the city of gold.' The board liked the idea so Breed got his crew making silver bricks from his mine which was at the time the richest silver mine in the world. The first brick made in Colorado mining history was made by William Bryant, who was the foreman of the project where thirty-seven bricks, one for each county to form the sidewalk the President would walk upon from his carriage to the Teller Hotel.

Caribou Mine was sold the following year to a group of men from the Netherlands. The only person in a management position that was kept was Bryant. At this time William not only served as the superintendent of the Caribou Mill at Nederland (town name changed to impress the new owners of the mill), but he was also the Chief Mechanic & Engineer.

In time Bryant's two sons, John and Billy, joined him in working at the mill and mine. William's family continued to live at Nederland and work at Caribou, a mining town just below the mining site that grew to house almost ten thousand people, mostly men of the mining trade from Ireland, Wales and Cornwall. William and sons worked at the mill and mine, while Mary Jane ran the town's only hotel, in which she was aided by her daughters Maud and Bessie. The only famous person to stay at the hotel according to Mary Jane, was Mr. Pullman; inventor of the Pullman Sleeping Car for trains. She said Pullman got the idea of using bunk beds from her hotel.

After 1880, the silver mining industry took a beating in the market plummeted to the point that extracting silver ore was no longer profitable. The Bryants removed from Nederland nineteen miles east to Boulder where William was killed from a house section falling on him while moving it in March of 1893. Son Billy went to work at a local brewery while he worked on being a freelance mine engineer and would own several mines himself, with an ability and name well known throughout the Rocky Mountain west. John Bryant became known as 'Pike' and in 1901 was killed when a crystallized stick of dynamite exploded while working in an abandoned section of a mine shaft. Their sister Maud, married a two-bit-timer she attempted to shoot, but whose pistol was empty having emptied it into the teen harlot she found him with. Maud went to jail along with her mother who acted as her accomplice, were found not guilty by a 12 man jury for “the rights of a tainted woman do not hold in balance the rights of a good woman wronged.” As for Bessie Bryant, she would marry a man named John Clark who later become Boulder County Commissioner and earn a lot of money in the tungsten mining industry. Lastly was Mary Jane, having twice in her life crossed the plains of America in a wagon; was on the first stagecoach to Colorado; who's memory was as fresh on current events as well as telling life experiences as if reciting from an history book. Her under 5 foot frame could be seen chopping wood and hauling water from the nearby creek, and when a passing miner passed by and saw her working would offer to help, she would say “I can do it myself!”

She might have married into the O'Bryan/Bryant Clan, but she and her family all had the can do spirit of High-King Brian Boru.