Hoyt

HOYT, HENRY MARTYN (June 8, 1830-
Dec. i, 1892), lawyer, politician, author, was
born at Kingston in Luzerne County, Pa. He
was the fifth child of Ziba and Nancy (Hurlbut)
Hoyt and a descendant of Simon Hoyt who had
settled in Massachusetts as early as 1629. His
early years were spent on his father's farm. He
attended the Wilkes-Barre Academy, the Wyo-
ming Seminary at Kingston, Lafayette College,
and Williams College, receiving from the last-
named institution the degree of A.B. in 1849.
After an interlude as teacher at Towanda, Pa.,
and at Wyoming Seminary, he entered a law of-
fice and was admitted to the bar in 1853. Two
years later, on Sept 25, 1855, he was married
to Mary Loveland. During the Civil War he
helped in the organization of the 52nd Regiment
of Pennsylvania Volunteers, of which he ulti-
mately became colonel. Toward the end of the
war he was captured and after an escape he was
recaptured, but he was later exchanged. At the
end of the war he received the rank of brigadier-
general. After the war his public career began
with his temporary appointment in 1867 by Gov-
ernor Geary as a judge in Luzerne County.
Shortly afterward he was defeated for the office
at the polls but two years later he was made col-
lector of internal revenue for Luzerne and Sus-
quehanna counties. In 1875 he secured the im-
portant post of chairman of the Republican state
committee. His political career found culmina-
tion in his election in 1878 as governor of the
state. During his administration the public rev-
enues exceeded the expenditures, and the state
debt was reduced more than a million and a half
dollars. Prosecution of railways for discrimina-
tions in freight rates, particularly in the trans-
portation of oil, was undertaken, but litigation
was ended by private adjustment of the disputes.
Steps were also taken to promote the public
health by the annulment of the charters of
certain medical schools which had been selling
diplomas and by the establishment of a state
medical board. Hoyt himself was keenly inter-
ested in penal reform and was a promoter of state
institutions for the reformation of youthful of-
fenders. He later became vice-president of the
National Prison Association and a member of
the Pennsylvania Board of Public Chanties.
Owing to a factional split in the Republican
party, Hoyt's successor was a Democrat His
final message to the legislature was a denun-
ciation of "professional" politicians. After his
retirement (in 1883 he returned to his law practice
in Philadelphia and Wilkes-Barre but was forced
by declining health to retire in three years. He
was the author of Protection Versus Free Trade,

Hoyt

published in 1886, and served as general secre-
tary and manager of the American Protective
Tariff League during the presidential campaign
of 1888.

[Hoyt's official papers are in Pa. Archives, 4 ser.,
vol. IX (1902). Other sources include: D. W. Hoyt,
A Gsned. Hist, of the Hoyt, Haight, and Hight Families
(1871); H. E. Hayden and others, Gcncal. and Family
Hist, of the Wyoming and Lackawanna Valleys, Pa.
(1906), vol. I; H. M. Jenkins, Pennsylvania: Colonial
and Federal (1903), vol. II; A. K. McClure, Old Time
Notes of Pa. (1905), vol. II; G. R. Bedford, "Some
Early Recollections/' Proc. and Colls. Wyoming Hist.
andGeol. Soc., vol. XVI (1919); and the Press (Phila.),
Dec. i, 1892. A few of Hoyt's letters are in the Pa.
Hist, Soc.] W.B.

HOYT, JOHN WESLEY (Oct. 13, 1831-
May 23, 1912), educator, governor of Wyoming-
Territory, was born near Worthington, Ohio,
the son of Joab and Judith (Hawley) Hoyt. He
graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University in
1849; attended for a time the Cincinnati Law-
School ; then followed a course at the Eclectic
Medical Institute, graduating in 1853. He was
married, on Nov. 28, 1854, to Elizabeth Orpha
Sampson, of Athens, Ohio. From 1853 to 1855
he taught chemistry and medical jurisprudence
at the Eclectic Medical Institute, then for the
next two years he taught at the Cincinnati Col-
lege of Medicine and at Antioch College. In
1857 he moved to Wisconsin. There he pub-
lished at Madison the Wisconsin Farmer and
Northwestern Cultivator, 1856-67; served as
secretary and manager of the Wisconsin State
Agricultural Society, 1860-72; helped to reor-
ganize the state university to include the agri-
cultural college; served as a state railway com-
missioner, 1874-76; and was a founder and
president, 1870-74, of the Wisconsin Academy
of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. He had opposed
slavery in the days before the Civil War and had
been active in the formation and establishment
of the Republican party, campaigning for Fre-
mont and Lincoln.

In 1878 President Hayes appointed Hoyt gov-
ernor of Wyoming Territory, a position which
he held until 1882. Owing to the condition of his
health, in 1885 he moved to California, but in
1887 he returned to Wyoming as the first presi-
dent of the state university and served until 1890.
He outlined a plan for the complete development
of the university which was in part adhered to
as the institution expanded, and in the state con-
stitutional convention of 1889, where he served
as chairman of the committee on education, he
influenced the educational system of the state.
As early as 1870 he had made a report to the
National Teachers' Association (later the Na-
tional Education Association) in favor of a

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