George Crouse Tyler

George Crouse Tyler was born in Circleville, Ohio, the oldest of three children for George H. Tyler and Harriet Parkhurst Tyler. He had a younger brother, Albert, who died before 1900, and a much younger sister Edith.

Tyler's family moved to Chillicothe, Ohio, where his father, an American Civil War veteran and carpenter, became owner-editor of the Scioto Gazette. Along with the newspaper, Tyler's father owned the print shop that produced it. At age 12, young Tyler persuaded his father to let him leave school and start work in the print shop at a dollar a week. Tyler and his father shared a passion for the theater; they often journeyed to nearby cities for stage performances too grand to stop at little Chillicothe. Tyler recalled that his first experience of the stage was seeing Jerry and Helen Cohan in Haworth's Hibernica.

Tyler grew up in comfortable circumstances, but was beset with wanderlust. He left home as a teenager, riding the rails and working as an itinerant compositor, roaming as far as Tucson, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. He could easily get jobs in print shops and with local newspapers, having learned early that margins were the key to successful compositing. After a few weeks or months he would drift on to the next western town. While riding illicitly on a passenger train from San Francisco to Truckee, California, in November 1884, Tyler and his buddy Frank Forbes made the newspapers after the latter was injured riding the roof of the train. Instead of being arrested, they were given jobs on a startup newspaper in Truckee, the Tri-Weekly News. Tyler also claimed to have disguised himself as a Native American, for at that time the western railroads allowed tribal members free passage.

Tyler married Cora Parson, age 21, at Chicago on April 7, 1892. The San Francisco Chronicle mentioned the marriage in passing, identifying her as a resident of that city. The couple had met there while he was working for O'Neill; she was a school teacher. Their breakup in November 1892 occurred when Tyler discovered she was having an affair with Mortimer F. Taylor. He was a major backer of the show currently employing Tyler as advance agent. The Evening World printed letters from the lovers and details from eyewitnesses, which other newspapers across the country picked up. Tyler and his wife filed suits for divorce against each other, after which the affair fell out of the public eye.

Tyler was reticent about his personal life in his memoir, which focused on his work. He makes no mention of his brief marriage, nor his sister Edith, though she lived with him in Manhattan from at least 1900, and served as his social hostess until her accidental death in 1937.