SAMUEL PIERCE HOYT and his HOME on the WEBER BY L Y M A N C. P E D E R S E N , J R .
Midway between Wanship and Coalville, in north central Utah, is the farming community of Hoytsville. A quarter of a mile south of the Hoytsville L.D.S. Chapel, between U.S. Highway 189 and the Weber River, stands the old Hoyt "mansion," which in its day was one of the most elegant homes in Utah. Its builder, Samuel Pierce Hoyt, was born November 21, 1807, in Chester, New Hampshire, the eldest of 11 children. In 1834 he married Emily Smith, sister of Judge Elias Smith and cousin to Joseph Smith. Through his wife, Hoyt was converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Having passed through the Missouri persecutions, he moved to Nauvoo, Illinois, and then to Nashville, Iowa, where he earned a livelihood supplying wood for steamboats plying their trade on the Mississippi. Mr. Pedersen, recent winner of the Freedoms Foundation George Washington Honor Medal, is presently a teaching assistant and completing studies toward a doctorate in American history at Brigham Young University. T h e author wishes to thank Mrs. E m m a Hoyt Stevens for the use of the photographs of Samuel Hoyt and his two wives which appear in this article.
Samuel Hoyt's three-story home on the Weber was begun in 1863 and was by a rock wall which enclosed about one and a half acres.
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UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
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