politician, newspaperman, educator, governor of Wyoming Territory, b. near Worthington, Ohio. He graduated from Ohio Wesleyan (A.B., 1849; A.M., 1852) and also received an MD. degree from an Ohio medical college in 1852. In 1857 he moved to Wisconsin, settling in Madison where he published the Wisconsin Farmer and Northwestern Cultivator (1857-1867). He was active in early Republican party politics, and in 1859 brought Abraham Lincoln to Wisconsin to deliver the address at the state fair in Milwaukee. Late in 1859 Hoyt was elected secretary and manager of the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society and served in this capacity from 1859 to 1872. He was instrumental in securing an agricultural college at the Univ. of Wisconsin. Hoyt represented Wisconsin at the London Universal Exhibition in 1862, and in 1867, as U.S. commissioner to the Paris Universal Exposition, made a voluminous report to the U.S. government describing European educational institutions. He was a founder and president (1870-1874) of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, and from 1874 to 1876 was a Wisconsin state railroad commissioner. In 1878 Hoyt was appointed governor of Wyoming Territory by President R. B. Hayes, and served in this capacity until 1882. He moved to California in 1885, but returned to Wyoming in 1887 to become the first president of the Univ. of Wyoming. He held this position until 1890, and in 1891 moved to Washington, D.C., where he devoted his interests to the promotion of a national university. He died in Washington. Dict. Amer. Biog.; Who's Who in Amer., 7(1912); Madison Wis. State Journal, May 29, 1912; J. W. Hoyt Papers.

The Wisconsin Historical Society has manuscripts related to this topic. See the catalog description of the John Wesley Hoyt Papers for details.

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[Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin biography]