Joseph W. Guyton (1889-1918) lived most of his life near Evart, where he worked as a farmer, plumber, and well driller. After the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, he was drafted into the army. Although he could have chosen not to go because he was married and had a child, he instead served with the 126th Infantry Regiment of the 32nd “Red Arrow Division.” On May 24, 1918, shortly after reaching the front line in the Alsace region of what was then Germany, he became the first American killed on German soil when machine gun fire struck him. France awarded the Croix de Guerre medal to Guyton and his unit for bravery in combat. His comrades buried his remains in a churchyard, and in 1921 they were returned to the United States and buried in Evart’s Forest Hill Cemetery. At a memorial ceremony in Hoboken, New Jersey, President Warren Harding laid a wreath on Guyton’s casket, which represented all the war dead. His remains were given to his parents and daughter, as his wife had died in the worldwide flu epidemic only months after him. Newspapers reported that 10,000 people attended his funeral in Evart, and tributes to him include Evart’s Guyton Park, the Joseph W. Guyton American Legion post in Evart, the US-10 “Guyton Bridge” over the Muskegon River in Osceola County, and Guyton Elementary School in Detroit.