The Founder of Sayre School:

David A. Sayre

1793 – 1870

An ambitious young man, David Sayre arrived in Lexington as a silversmith apprentice in 1811. Having traveled from Madison, New Jersey, where he was born March 12, 1793, he soon won the support of Lexington’s business community and expanded his considerable entrepreneurial acumen to the banking business.

As William T. Williams writes in All Rise: A History of Sayre School, “The fortune that Sayre accumulated in banking over the remaining years of his life would drive his many altruistic ventures and provide for him a rather exalted status among the merchants and businessmen of the area.”

Along with Sayre School, David A. Sayre’s name is associated with the founding of numerous institutions throughout Fayette County including churches and the Lexington Cemetery, where he was buried in 1870.