He was born in Cleveland, Ohio and graduated from Yale College in 1898 and was the heir to the Bristol-Myers pharmaceutical fortune.
Myers began collecting textiles in 1896 with a rug he bought for his room at Yale University.
His wife, Louise Stoddard Chase, assumed Myers' duties on the board of trustees at The Textile Museum from the time of his death through 1958.
As the years passed and his finances allowed, however, his interests grew to include other types of non-Western textiles along with examples from earlier periods.
[2] In the early 1920s, Myers’ focus shifted to the meaning of these objects, and he set out to widen the scope of knowledge about textiles.