This photograph shows Charles August Hyer and Amelia Hyer standing in front of a Hyer Boot Company exhibit. Charles August Hyer was the son of Charles Henry Hyer, founder of Hyer Boot Company. Charles Henry Hyer, the son of an immigrant German shoemaker, arrived in Leavenworth in 1870 and worked, for a time, building railroads. He soon moved to Olathe and got a job teaching shoe and harness making at the Kansas School for the Deaf. With money he saved, he opened his own shoemaking shop in Olathe and asked his brother, Ed, to join him in running the business. In the years that followed, the Hyers developed a measurement chart to send out with their flyers that enabled customers, even cowboys at the remotest ranches, to order custom made boots to fit their precise size and fashion preference. The business blossomed and, by 1900, it had grown from two employees to 15. During World War I, the Hyers made boots for the officers at Fort Leavenworth and at Camp Funston. By the 1960s more than 70 people were busy making boots for a worldwide clientele. After Charles Henry Hyer died in 1921, his sons managed the company.