Hoard

vention that formally organized the Republican
party in Massachusetts.

In f844 the governor, as authorized by the leg-
islature, employed him to test the constitutionality
of certain South Carolina laws under which many
Massachusetts colored citizens, seamen on ves-
sels touching at South Carolina ports, were seized
on arrival, put in jail, and kept imprisoned till
their vessel sailed or, if their jail fees were not
then paid, sold as slaves. On the day of Hoar's
arrival in Charleston the legislature, only one
member dissenting, by resolution requested the
Governor to expel "the Northern emissary" from
the state. Warned by the mayor and the sheriff
that his life was in danger and urged to depart,
he replied that he was too old to run and that he
could not return to Massachusetts without an ef-
fort to perform the duty assigned him. Under
threat of violence from the mob that surrounded
his hotel, at the earnest request of a committee
of seventy leading citizens, he consented to walk
—instead of being dragged—to the carriage
waiting to convey him to the boat. The indignity
to which this venerable citizen of Massachusetts
had been subjected produced hot indignation
throughout the North.

After he had retired from active practice of
the law, for nearly twenty years he devoted his
energies to the service of the church, of temper-
ance, and of various organizations for the pro-
motion of peace, colonization, and education. He
was an overseer of Harvard College but not less
interested and conscientious in his duties as a
member of the Concord school committee. He
was a Unitarian, strict in observance of the Sab-
bath, and for many years teacher and superin-
tendent in the local Sunday school. He was of
imposing appearance, of great courtesy especially
to women and little children, and tender to all
who were the victims of injustice. He married
(Oct. 13, 1812) Sarah, daughter of Roger Sher-
man [q.v.~\ of Connecticut. Six children were
born to them. Four of his descendants followed
him in service in the national House of Repre-
sentatives : his sons, E. Rockwood and George F.
Hoar [g.z>.]; and two grandsons, Sherman and
Rockwood Hoar.

[G. F. Hoar, Autobiog. of Seventy Years (1903),
vol. I; G, F. Hoar, in Memorial Biogs. New Eng. Hist.
Geneal. Soc.f vol. Ill (1883); Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc.f i
ser., vol. V (1862) ; Barzillai Frost, A Sermon Preached
in Concord (1856) ; Joseph Palmer, Necrology of Alum-
ni of Harvard College (1864) ; H. S. Nourse, The Hoar
Family (1899) ; R. W. Emerson, in Putnam's Monthly
Mag.t Dec, 1856; Boston Transcript, Nov. 3, 1856.]

G.H.H.

HOARD, WILLIAM DEMPSTER (Oct. 10,
i836-Nov. 22, 1918), editor, promoter of dairy
farming, governor of Wisconsin, was born in

Hoard
Munnsville, Madison County, N. Y., the eldest
son of a poor Methodist circuit rider, William
Bradford Hoard, and his wife, Sarah Katherine
White. He was a descendant of Hezekiah Hore,
of Norman ancestry—the name having originally
been Le Hore—who came to America in 1637.
After a time the spelling of the name was changed
to Hoar, and in 1760 the "d" was added by
Hoard's great-great-great-grandfather. As a
child, William spent many days on the farm of
his grandfather, a shrewd judge of cows. It was
there the boy first learned facts about dairying
and the good points of a dairy animal. At six-
teen, he was hired as a helper to Waterman Si-
mons, a nearby dairyman, who taught him butter
and cheese making and the care and feeding of
cattle, and insisted on his spending an hour each
day in reading the best farm papers and books of
the time. The lure of Horace Greeley's "West"
took Hoard to Wisconsin in 1857. He received
a license to be an exhorter in the Methodist
Church, but because he differed with some of its
doctrines he finally burned the license and went
to cutting wood. The three years following, he
taught singing school and gave violin lessons in
many southern Wisconsin towns. In 1860 he
married Agnes Elizabeth Bragg of Lake Mills,
who encouraged him in all his undertakings and
bravely shared the poverty of his young man-
hood. He enlisted in 1861 for service in the
Civil War and was with General Butler at the
capture of New Orleans.
Hoard's work as founder of the modern dairy
industry is closely linked with his work as editor.
In 1870 he started at Lake Mills the Jefferson
County Union, a weekly newspaper in which he
voiced his ideas of what dairying might do for
the wheat-weary soil, and how the dairy cow
might be made more profitable. In 1885 he es-
tablished Hoard's Dairyman at Fort Atkinson,
a paper which before long was circulating in
every state of the Union and in most foreign
countries. In 1871 he started the Jefferson
County Dairyman's Association, and through his
editorial influence he was able in 1872 to found
the Wisconsin State Dairyman's Association
which in 1890 was partly responsible for the es-
tablishment of the dairy school at the University
of Wisconsin. In 1872 also he helped to or-
ganize the Northwestern Dairyman's Associ-
ation, and the next year the Watertown dairy
board of trade. Through his direct efforts in 1873
low rates were secured for the first time to take
the state's yearly output of millions of pounds of
cheese to the Atlantic Coast in refrigerator cars.
It was Hoard who introduced alfalfa into Wis-
consin; he was one of the first to use the tuber-