Samuel Pierce Hoyt and his Home on the Weber

SAMUEL PIERCE HOYT and his HOME on the WEBER

BY LYMAN C. PEDERSEN, JR.

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.

According to Orson F. Whitney, when the Prophet Joseph Smith crossed the Mississippi River on June 22, 1844, hoping to flee to the West, Samuel Hoyt was among the number to greet him on the Iowa shore. At that time Hoyt supplied the prophet with money to complete his plans. This must be reconciled with the fact that the Times and Seasons for April 15, 1844, lists Samuel P. Hoyt, with Daniel Spencer, Joseph J. Woodbury, and others, as being called to serve a mission in Massachusetts.

Little is known of Hoyt's activities until the year 1851. On March 1 of that year he joined a company under the leadership of Captain John Brown and departed for the Valley of the Great Salt Lake. The company arrived in Utah on September 29, 1851. Within a very short time, Hoyt, among others, was called to join Anson Call's party then being formed to settle Fillmore. He joined the company and reached Fillmore in November 1851. For nine months the Hoyt family home had been a covered wagon.

Call's company settled on Chalk Creek, and within a short time not only cabins had been erected, but a gristmill and a sawmill as well. Hoyt became engaged in running a tannery and a dry goods store. His interest in civil affairs appears in the following letter to George A. Smith, dated November 25, 1851:

We have had our election in this city for county officers and who would have thought of my being elected Justice of the Peace for Millard County. I have circulated the petition for a post route through this place, and have got nearly one hundred signers to it.

A further duty requiring some time and patience was the job of feeding and then returning nine yoke of oxen Hoyt had borrowed in Great Salt Lake City to enable the Hoyt family to migrate to Fillmore.

On October 28, 1851, the legislature had named Fillmore as the site of the territorial capital, and in 1852 the erection of a rock and cement capitol was begun. Hoyt was placed in charge of the construction and dedicated his time and energy to the work. Crews were in charge of burning lime at night and quarrying rock during the day. Hoyt advanced money to bring glass, putty, and finishing nails from California. His letters and the reports of occasional visitors to Fillmore indicate Hoyt's activities in the building of the territorial capitol and also in other community mat-

ters. George Woodward, in 1854, visited the settlement on Chalk Creek to assist in finishing the south wing of the capitol and wrote, "Brother S. P. Hoyt used his utmost exertion to have the necessary materials furnished." The following year George A. Smith reported that Hoyt was prospering in "dry goods, groceries, and hardware."

During the famine of 1856, Hoyt drew from his supply of several thousand bushels of wheat and sustained a great many of the poor in Fillmore. During the same year he married a second wife, Emma Burbidge, who mothered his 11 children. He was also appointed Indian agent and Indian farmer for the Pahvant Tribe during this time. As agent, on one occasion, he saved the lives of two Indian children by purchasing them from their captors. Hoyt's only living daughter, now in her late eighties, informed the writer that she recalled her father telling of the cuts on the neck of the Indian boy, Lucas, inflicted by his captors to force Hoyt into the sale.

A final note in the year 1856 reveals Hoyt's varied activities causing concern to at least one person. A certain "Brother Hoyet" wrote to President Brigham Young complaining of his partnership in the tannery business with Samuel P. Hoyt. The letter states:

I made the usual agreement between a capitalist on the one side and a mechanic on the other. He was to furnish the means to start the business and do a fair share of the work which in such cases is usually one half. I was afterward to pay him back from that half of the leather which belonged to me one half the capital he advanced. During two years he has not done to my knowledge one fortnight's work.

The activities and influence of Hoyt come again into focus from the journal of Anson Call concerning the tragic Gunnison massacre of 1853. Call recorded:

In July, 1853, I received a letter from Thomas King, one of my counselors, that he wished me to return to Fillmore in consequence of the Indian War that had broken out in June with Walker's band in which some of the brethren had already been killed and much plundering done by the Indians in the Southern settlements.

Arriving in Fillmore, Call found the Pahvant Indians still friendly and assisting the settlers harvesting their grain. California immigrants, and particularly a company under a man named Hilliard, had done much to provoke Walker's band. In Fillmore, Hilliard told the settlers that he would kill any Indians coming into his camp, Pahvant or any other tribe. The next morning Call was informed that three of the friendly Pahvants had been killed. Call, with Peter Robertson, Bishop Bartholomew, and Samuel P. Hoyt, trailed and overtook Hilliard's company, forcing them to return four rifles they had taken from the Pahvants. Pahvant warriors trailed and annoyed Hilliard's party for two or three weeks.

On October 16, John W. Gunnison, with his party of 60 men, including 30 soldiers, arrived in Fillmore. Gunnison needed $500 to continue his expedition. This was raised by Call through Samuel P. Hoyt. Gunnison then set out to survey Pahvant Lake, after which he planned to return to Great Salt Lake City for winter quarters. On October 26 Lieutenant E. G. Beckwith returned to Fillmore with the news that Gunnison and seven others had been killed while camped on the Sevier. Call's party, including Hoyt, immediately rode to the scene of the massacre and buried six of the ill-fated travelers on the banks of the Sevier. According to Call's journal, the only remains to be found of Gunnison was his thigh bone.

In 1860 several events took place that caused Sam Hoyt to make the decision to move to the Weber River. During the summer of that year, he expended a large sum of money and devoted much of his tireless energy in laying the foundation for a large flouring mill in Fillmore. In the course of time, he apparently became convinced that both the city council and certain members of the community were taking unfair advantage of him by placing obstacles in his path. On December 1 of that year he wrote the following letter to President Brigham Young:

Dear Sir: I wish to lay before you the obstacles that have been thrown in the way since Bro. Kesler located my flouring mill site in Fillmore City. Bro. Bartholomew has commenced erecting a flouring mill some six or eight rods below his old mill, laying the foundation across the creek leaving but a small arch for the water to pass through, with the calculation to turn the creek out of its chanel [sic] some considerable distance above my millsite or dam. He also says that the dam that I take the water out with to run any mill will have to be covered on account of the backwater that will prevent his mill from running, which will greatly damage me and will destroy all that I have done, leaving my mill race dry or nearly so. The City Council through their supervisor has instructed me to bridge an unreasonable amount of my mill race as I look at it, therefore I feel to ask your council in the matter, what to do and how to proceed.

Brigham Young's advice was forthcoming, "Go to Weber," he said, "they want and need a mill there." Hoyt was convinced, and left Fillmore May 18, 1861, arriving on the Weber June 1. Hoyt's wagon load of heavy machinery broke down one of the first two bridges spanning the Weber River in Summit County. The Deseret News of May 29 commented on Hoyt's journey:

Within the past week, several gentlemen from Summit have called at our office and made favorable reports of the progress of the settlements being made on the Weber river, and its tributaries, in that newly organized county. The season there is not so far advanced as in this and adjoining valleys, but the settlers are confident of success in their efforts to turn those narrow vales into fruitful fields. The range for stock there is represented to be excellent, and the animals that were wintered in that region are said to be in fine condition. A good bridge has recently been built over the Weber some five or six miles below the mouth of Silver Creek, which although not so expensive and elegant as some which have been constructed in Utah, Great Salt Lake and Weber counties, is pronounced a substantial structure by those who have crossed it. Another bridge is being built over the same stream a few miles above Silver Creek, which is shortly to be finished.

Several saw mills are either in progress of erection, or are to be commenced at an early day. Mr. S. P. Hoyt, of Fillmore, is now on his way thither with the machinery and necessary material for the building of a grist mill, which he designs to have in operation this season. Such improvements cannot fail to operate advantageously to the development of the resources of that part of the Territory, and the rapid growth and prosperity of the settlements that have been and will be formed in that county.

Although not the first settler in what came to be known as Hoytsville, Samuel P. Hoyt without question did more than any other man to establish on a sound economic foundation the settlement which bears his name.

Hoyt's gristmill was completed in 1862. In the spring of the following year, the ambitious pioneer made a trip tot he Missouri with wool for the eastern markets, exchanging it for machinery, including an iron lathe which was reported to be the first one brought to Utah.

Upon his return, or shortly thereafter, work was commenced on the grand mansion which now stands northwest of the remains of the gristmill. The Deseret News of October 2, 1868, gives us more information on this remarkable structure and upon Hoyt's other activities:

Our friend Samuel P. Hoyt, Esq., whose hospitalities we enjoyed at Fillmore "on the move" in 1868, has made his mark on the Weber at a point some three miles above Coalville. When we saw him there in the Fall of 1860, [1861] himself and family were all that constituted Hoytsville; tents and covered wagons were their comilies; [homilies?] their neighbors were the red men; and primitive rudeness of the most crude description stalked abroad. A few years of well applied toil — the capital of the Mormon Pioneer — by a single individual have worked wonders in the appearance of things. There is a substantial stone flouring mill and alongside of it a machine house, also of stone; beside many smaller dwellings, on lines of fences inclosing.

"Meadows broad and pastures green, with gentle slopes and groves of willows between."

But the most attractive feature of the results of eight years labor in these forbidding wilds is the dwelling house, now up above the first story. This is being built of an elegantly white sand-stone, with a light bluish tinge; front 50 ft by 35, rear wing 30 by 28 — the front and ends of finely chiseled work. It will be two stories high, with an attic and observatory. The first floor of main building has 12 feet ceilings. When completed, this will unquestionably be one of the handsomest and most durable private dwellings in Utah — at a cost of some $35,000.

In Rhoades Valley he has also established a ranch, with corral 700 feet long by 140 wide, 20 foot shedding the entire circuit; cuts 200 tons hay; keeps 200 head of stock; has a hewed log dwelling house, 51 by 20 feet; two stories high; has paid up all his workmen and has money to lend. It may be seen by the above that some things can be done in Utah as elsewhere, but with an almost incalculable degree of excessive labor. Bro. Hoyt's flouring mill has been stopped for some time, to the great inconvenience of the people, on account of some opposition by land owners against the cutting of a new mill-race. Penny wise and pound foolish is very much shortsighted in this fast age.

During the latter part of September 1869, a number of church leaders including Brigham Young, Wilford Woodruff, George A. Smith, Daniel H. Wells, George Q. Cannon, and Franklin D. Richards, made a tour of Heber, Kamas, Peoa, Wanship, and Coalville, speaking to the Saints in each of these points. The tour ended at Coalville, and after the evening meal, the president's party began the trip homeward. The company reporter wrote:

At Bishop Hardy's, Parley's Canyon, while waiting for the moon to rise, the party partook of supper, and driving on, reached the city at 11 p.m. . . . The region visited has not been seen for years by them. The most of the settlements, therefore, were entirely new, and those of them which were not new had changed so much since last seen as to be scarcely recognizable. . . . Wanship and Coalville both wear an air of thrift and prosperity and must eventually, we think, become important points. ... It will be but a few years, if the people carry out their principles, and the instructions they receive, until log houses will almost be unknown, and in their stead, will be seen elegant residences of stone. The residence of S. P. Hoyt, Esq., of Hoytsville, between Coalville and Wanship, is already probably the finest and most expensive house between the Wasatch Mountains and the Missouri River. It is built of cut white sandstone, and when completed, will be a credit to the country.

Hoyt's home was never completed, but his work was ended in the early 1870's. The imposing structure still stands near the banks of the Weber River, just below a small hill on the east. Of the 14 rooms, not including bathrooms, nine had fireplaces. Three living rooms, two of the hallways, and a number of the floors were beautifully painted. Handsome murals painted by a Norwegian artist singularly named Olsen, decorated the walls and ceilings of the main floor. Some of these may still be viewed.

A spiral staircase began a few feet from the east door and ascended through all three floors. Original painting along this staircase may still be seen. A second, smaller, staircase ascended through the rear of the house.

A full basement extends under the entire area of the mansion. A well, still to be seen, was sunk in the west part of the basement giving a ready source of fresh water. A huge rock wall four-feet thick separates the kitchen in the basement from the other half. The well was sunk by the north wall of the kitchen. A dumb-waiter system enabled those in the basement kitchen to readily deliver hot food to the upper floors. The thickness of the stone walls, three feet at the foundation, made working in the kitchen bearable, even on hot summer days. A kitchen fireplace provided warmth for the winter.

Long rows of nails on the side beams in the east room of the basement bear evidence that it was used as a meat cutting and storing room. Hoyt's herd of cattle provided a constant store of fresh meat which hung in the basement for immediate use. A huge central beam cut from a single tree measures some 45 feet in length and 3 feet in thickness. It extends overhead the full length of the basement.

A rock wall surrounds the mansion, enclosing about one and a half acres. It was built of rock left over from the construction of the home, except the top layer which was of hand-dressed stone. The wall was originally from five- to seven-feet high. The wall contained three small iron gates and a double gate at the entrance. These hand-tooled gates still remain.

A school was held in the old machine house south of the gristmill for the children of the community until the mansion was built, when the school was moved to two rooms on the third floor. Hoyt's first wife, Emily, was the teacher. Some rods north of the mansion and the gristmill, stood the old creamery. The machine house has disappeared, but the ruins of the mill and the creamery still bear mute evidence of former activity.

During the 1870's Hoyt spent his time farming, stockraising, and mining. As early as 1869, he was winning prizes in stock shows and fairs. In that year, in the "Ninth Annual Exhibition of the Deseret Agricultural and Manufacturing Society," he won a prize for "the second best Durham Bull." In the same contest, other winners were Wilford Woodruff, for "the best Ayrshire Cow, the best brood mare, draft, the best three year old colt, draft, and the best two year old stallion, draft"; and Orrin P. Rockwell for the "best four year old filly, and year old mule colt."

Hoyt spent his closing years at his ranch near Kamas which had been built in the late 1860's. His second wife, Emma, maintained this home while his first wife Emily remained at the mansion where she was known to the community as "Ma Hoyt." Death came for the old pioneer on August 12, 1889. He was buried in the little Hoytsville cemetery by the chapel on the hill. His memory is preserved in the town that bears his name, the fine old mansion by the river, and by Hoyt's Peak east of present-day Kamas. The crumbling rock wall, the iron gates tearing from their hinges, and the wind in the giant pines in front of the silent old mansion hold secrets of early days on the Weber.

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