The Eyre family refers to the descendants of George Eyre and Mary Smith Eyre who comprised a political and business dynasty prominent in the Northeastern United States from the colonial era to the early 20th century. During the American Revolutionary War several members of the family served in key military and political positions, while the Eyre shipping company proved critical in the founding of the U.S. Navy.
Unlike other American political families such as the Adamses, the Lees, and, later, the Bushes and the Kennedys, the Eyres were members of an established noble house and had no social or economic incentive to leave England. Colonial and Revolutionary Families of Pennsylvania reports that George Eyre, founder of the dynasty in the United States, was the great-grandson of arch-royalist Gervaise Eyre, who served as governor of Newark Castle during the English Civil War, auctioned off one of his personal estates to provide loans to King Charles I, and eventually died defending the Crown.
The family had been of significant repute in England since at least 1066, with the semi-mythical account of their line's founding during the Battle of Hastings evolving into a national legend. Some sources trace the family's origin even further, linking them to King Ethelred II through the Neville line (Gervaise's grandfather having wed Mary Neville).
One of the Eyres' palaces was Hope, which, historian Hamilton Hume notes in The Life of Edward John Eyre, Late Governor of Jamaica, "continued in the family until the period of the Civil Wars, when the then head of the family, Sir Gervas Eyre, Governor of Newark Castle, sold it to raise the last loan ever contracted for King Charles the First."