Albert L. Myer

Albert L. Myer (14 November 1846 – 16 July 1914) was a soldier in the United States Army from 1865 to 1912, and interim Mayor of Ponce, Puerto Rico, in 1899 starting on 12 September. He filled as interim mayor of the city after the forced resignation of popularly elected mayor Luis Porrata-Doria.

Early years Albert Lee Myer was born 14 November 1846, in Troy, New York, to Lt. Col. Aaron B. Myer and Julia A. Myer. Myer went to school in the public education system of Troy. His father was a member of the 125th Regiment of the New York State Volunteer Infantry which was organized at Troy, Rensselaer County, New York. The 125th participated in the Battle of the Wilderness. On May 8, 1863, his father died of the wounds which he received in action during the battle.

On 15 June 1870 he married Wilhelmina Henderson. The couple had two sons, George Henderson Myer and Eagar Myer, both who would eventually join the military. George Henderson Myer, his oldest son, died in 1891, while attending West Point. He was buried in the grounds of the academy.

Military career Myer enlisted in the United States Army as a private in 1865, and was assigned to Company F, 3rd Battalion, 11th Infantry. In 1868, he took part in the Reconstruction of the South. While participating in the Reconstruction, he was briefly kidnapped and later released by the Ku Klux Klan.

In April 1898, he was transferred with the Eleventh Infantry from Fort Whipple in Arizona to Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis, Missouri. The Eleventh Infantry left Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, 19 April 1898, then to a training camp near Mobile, Alabama, via Chickamauga, and on to Tampa, Florida arriving 7 June, for transport to Puerto Rico.

On 12 December 1898, he landed in Guanica with the 11th Infantry as part of the invading forces of General Theodore Schwan. Myer and the American Army remained in Puerto Rico where a provisional military government was installed. It was during this time in Puerto Rico that Myer was commissioned to mayor the city of Ponce. Major Myer was appointed by the first military governor of Puerto Rico, Major General Nelson A. Miles.

San Ciriaco, however, proved to be the test of the mayorship of Porrata Doria. As a result of the impact of the hurricane, a number of demonstrations took place around the island to denounce the municipal governments’ poor response to the disaster. “The most serious demonstration of tension took place in Ponce, where damage and mortality had been extensive, especially for the poor. A large crowd of several hundred indigent residents gathered to denounce mayor Porrata Doria for not giving the population adequate warning or taking appropriate measures. A detachment of the U.S. Fifth Cavalry broke up the demonstrations, but the mayor was eventually forced to resign.” In 1912, he was the Commanding Officer of the Field Artillery School in Fort Sill, Oklahoma.