Chapter III. HENRY MARTYN HOYT, Governor of the Commonwealth, 1879-1883. H ISTORY WILL RECOGNIZE THE WEIGHT OF the personality of Governor Hoyt among the chief magistrates of the Commonwealth. He was born of English ancestry, at Kingston, in 1830. Prepared by an early education at the old Wilkes-Barre Academy and Wyoming Seminary, he passed two years at Lafayette College and was graduated at Williams College in 1849. The following year, he taught in the Academy at Towanda, and in 1851 he became Professor of Mathematics in Wyoming Seminary at Kingston; he also taught in the graded schools of Memphis, Tenn., for one year. Finally entering upon the study of law, he was admitted to the bar of Luzerne county in 1853. In 1855 he was an unsuccessful Whig candidate for District Attorney. He offered his services promptly upon the outbreak of the War of the Rebellion and actively engaged in raising the 52d Pennsylvania Volunteers of which he was commissioned Lieutenant Colonel, and, two years later, Colonel. His regiment participated in the Peninsula in the reconnoissance from Bottom's Bridge to Green Pines and was selected to hold the enemy in check at the passages of the Chickahominy. He was engaged in the siege at Fort Wagner. In 1864 he was captured with nearly his entire command of a hundred and twenty men in a night attack with small boats upon Fort Johnson in Charleston Harbor. While en route to prison, he with four other Union officers escaped from the cars, but were recaptured by the aid of blood hounds; during his imprisonment in Charleston, he was one of fifty officers who were placed under the fire of the Union guns in retaliation for an alleged violation of the usages of war by the Northern army in course of the siege. Shortly before the close of the war he was exchanged and rejoined his regiment, to be mustered out soon after with the brevet of Brigadier General. Having returned to his home General Hoyt resumed the practice of law, and meanwhile keeping in touch with public affairs. His interest in education found an outlet in membership in the Wilkes-Barre school board and his legal eminence was recognized in his appointment by Governor Geary in 1867 as Additional Law Judge of the county of Luzerne. In 1869 he was appointed Collector of Internal Revenue for the Counties of Luzerne and Susquehanna, but resigned in 1873. In 1875 he was chosen Chairman of the Republican State Committee. |