Hoxie

ragut," Vinnie Ream was married to Lieut.
Richard Leveridge Hoxie, United States army.
The occasion was brilliant, even for Washington.
Mrs. Hoxie became one of the popular hostesses
of the city; for many years she gave up her art,
only to return to it in later life. To her final
period belong two works in Statuary Hall: the
"Gov. Samuel Kirkwood," presented by the State
of Iowa, and the "Sequoyah" (a statue of the
Cherokee halfbreed who invented the Cherokee
alphabet), the gift of Oklahoma. The model of
the "Sequoyah," finished shortly before Mrs.
Hoxie's death in Washington, was put into the
hands of the sculptor George Zolnay. The com-
pleted bronze, placed in 1917, shows a technique
somewhat more able than that seen in her earlier
works. In addition to those already mentioned,
the list of her sitters for portrait-busts or me-
dallions include famous names: General Grant,
General McClellan, General Fremont; Senator
Sherman, Peter Cooper, Ezra Cornell, Horace
Greeley, Liszt, Kaulbach, Spurgeon. Among her
ideal figures are "The West," "The Indian Girl/'
"The Spirit of the Carnival," "Miriam," "Sap-
pho." A bronze copy of the "Sappho" was placed
over her grave in the National Cemetery at Ar-
lington, Va.

[R. L. Hoxie, Vinnie Ream (1908), a well-illustrated
and fairly complete memoir, printed for private dis-
tribution; National Republican, Jan. 8, 1921; C. E.
Fairman, Arts and Artists of the Capitol (1927) ; Lo-
rado Taft, The Hist, of Am. Sculpture (enl. ed., 1924) ;
Who's Who in America, 1914-15 ; Evening Star (Wash-
ington), Nov. 20, 1914; Washington Post, Nov. 21,
W*] A. A.

HOXIE, WILLIAM DIXIE (July i, 1866-
Jan. 12, 1925), marine engineer, inventor, was
the son of John and Isabelle (Dickinson) Hoxie;
his father, a sea-captain, had commanded several
of the crack clipper ships. William was born in
Brooklyn, N, Y., and educated in the public
schools of that city and at Stevens Institute of
Technology, Hoboken, N. J., from which he
graduated in 1889 with the degree of mechanical
engineer. He entered the employ of the Babcock
& Wilcox Company at once and spent the rest of
his life in its service, being vice-president 1897-
1919, president, 1919-24, and vice-chairman
thereafter until his death. He became interested
in adapting the Babcock & Wilcox boiler for
marine use and in furthering its adoption for that
purpose and organized the marine department of
the company. The first installations were in
steamers on the Great Lakes, and in 1896 the
first in the United States Navy were made in
the gunboats Annapolis and Marietta; the latter
accompanied the Oregon in her famous trip from
San Francisco to Florida via the Straits of
Magellan at the beginning of the war with Spain.

Hoxie
The exigencies of that war showed the superi-
ority of water-tube boilers, and since then they
have been used almost exclusively for war ves-
sels. For many years it could be said that every
United States battleship and a great many for-
eign ones were fitted with boilers of Hoxie's de-
sign. He had great engineering aptitude and
ability and made improvements in the boiler from
time to time. Since the Babcock & Wilcox boiler
was not adapted to the extremely light weights
necessary in torpedo craft and other very highly
powered vessels, Hoxie selected a well-known
foreign boiler of the express type, made some
radical changes and improvements, and produced
the Babcock & Wilcox express type boiler. Dur-
ing the World War, he presented to the Shipping
Board the plan which was approved for manu-
facturing Babcock & Wilcox boilers with great
rapidity. It involved some enlargement of the
works and the manufacture of new tools and
equipment The output was increased to three
boilers per day for the Shipping Board and one
express boiler per day for the navy; besides other
work for that service. This rate of production
involved having under construction at one time,
in various stages of completion, fifty-four Bab-
cock & Wilcox boilers for the Shipping Board
and nineteen express boilers for the navy. There
were ordered more than 1,200 boilers for the
Shipping Board and more than 300 express boil-
ers for naval destroyers. The output was so rapid
as to exceed the rate at which the ships were
building in the great assembly yards at Hog
Island, Bristol, and Newark, so that orders for
some were cancelled after the Armistice. This is
probably the only case on record of the "manu-
facture" of marine boilers. Each of the 1,200
was like every other, a fact which contributed to
the rapidity of output.
Hoxie was thoroughly progressive; an earnest
advocate of high-pressure superheating, and
other elements of increased economy and effi-
ciency. He was an enthusiastic yachtsman and
held certificates as master and engineer. He uti-
lized his yacht, the Idalia, for experiments with
superheat, oil-burning, and other problems. A
man of attractive personality, with a wide circle
of friends, he was very generous in charitable
benefactions, but always with the stipulation that
his name should not be mentioned. He was a
trustee of Stevens Institute of Technology, of
Webb Institute of Naval Architecture, and of
the Wilcox Memorial Library of Westerly, R. L
In 1892 he married Lavinia Brown of Westerly,
who with one daughter survived him. His death
occurred aboard the Southern Cross, on the way
to Rio de Janeiro.