John Hoyt, UW’s First President: Doctor, Lawyer and Visionary
When President Rutherford Hayes offered Dr. John Hoyt the ambassadorship to Spain in 1877, Hoyt turned him down. Less than a year later, the President insisted that Hoyt take another appointment, governor of the territory of Wyoming. This time, Hoyt later said, Hayes made it impossible to refuse.
In a place that had been a territory for less than a decade and without any institution of higher education, the 48-year-old Ohio native would make huge contributions to its development. But it was not as territorial governor that he is remembered today, but as the first president of the University of Wyoming.
Born Oct. 3, 1831, he graduated from Ohio Wesleyan in 1849 at the age of 18. Hoyt went on to gain degrees in law and medicine. He married Elizabeth Orpha Sampson on Nov. 28, 1854, at Cincinnati, Ohio, while Hoyt was professor of chemistry and medical jurisprudence at the Cincinnati College of Medicine and the Eclectic Medical Institute of Cincinnati. She was a mathematics instructor at Worthington Female Seminary, Worthington, Ohio.
As both a practicing physician and lawyer, he moved to Wisconsin in 1857 to edit the state’s first agricultural journal, the Wisconsin Farmer and Northwestern Cultivator and serve as secretary and managing officer of the Wisconsin Agricultural Society (1860-72). During this time he had a role in the formation of the Republican Party. As vice president of the U. S. Agricultural Society (1860-72), he was U. S. Commissioner to the London Universal Exhibition in 1862 and chaired the U. S. Commission to the Paris Exposition in 1867. His wife was a charter member of the Mount Vernon Association, one of the nation’s earliest historic preservation groups, dedicated to preservation of George Washington’s Virginia home.
Soon after Hoyt arrived in Cheyenne in 1878 to take the territorial governorship, he commented on the need for a university and urged federal support for it. Following his four-year appointment, he did what few other territorial officers did in those days—he stayed in Cheyenne where he founded the “Wyoming Academy of Arts and Sciences.” When the Wyoming legislature established the university, Hoyt became one of the first trustees, resigning from that position when he was chosen its first president.
Hoyt’s leadership guided UW through its first three years when the faculty numbered just 5 (and Hoyt also taught classes ranging from history to engineering) and the student count barely rose above 50. He laid out the curriculum, pressed for increased funding, and authorized “land-grant” selections. His wife Elizabeth lectured on logic and psychology at UW from 1887-90, later earning the Ph.D. from the University of Denver (1890). In 1889, John Hoyt was elected to the Constitutional Convention and, there, he drafted the wording for the Education Article, much of which still exists in the present Constitution.
His departure from UW in December 1890 was the subject of debate. Some claim he left for reasons of health while others assert that the board fired him. One board member called him “too visionary and impractical.” Whatever the cause, Hoyt moved to Washington, D. C., where he continued his unsuccessful drive to establish a national university. He became the organizer and permanent chairman of the national committee of 400 to promote the establishment of the University of the United States, that included representatives of all the state universities and all leading private universities in the country. He died there in 1914, already recognized on the UW campus with a building named in his honor—and a university fulfilling his vision.