 Manuel Eyre, Jr.'s sudden death in 1845 led to the dissolution of Eyre & Massey and the beginning of the Eyres' slow decline.The family's habit of staging political marriages (which it had done as far back as the 1760s) helped ease this slide; Eyre daughters married into the wealthy Ashhurst and Heller houses, thus inheriting control of Grange Estate and DeLay Plantation, while a Heller son took a wife from the Dutch Vanderslice family.The demise of Leroy Vanderslice Heller's fortune during the 1929 stock market crash and subsequent Great Depression marked the terminus of the family's political and economic influence.