Mary Pierpont Hoyt

1849–11 November 1923

MARY PIERPONT HOYT, daughter of [Uriah Grandison] Hoyt, a native of Norwalk, Conn., who belonged to the old Hoyt family originating in Stamford, Conn., was born at South Avon, N.Y. Her mother, whose maiden name was Emma G. Pierpont, and who was a relative of J. Pierpont Morgan’s mother, died when May was seven years old.

May attended the Oread [Collegiate Institute, Worcester, Massachusetts] in 1862–63, and then, returning to her home in Rochester, N.Y., entered the Livingstone Park Seminary, a private school in that city. She graduated from the seminary and taught there for two years. Afterwards she taught for two years in the public schools. Part of the next year she spent in Richmond, Va., her father’s home at that time. Of her life since then, she writes as follows:

I regained my health, went back to Rochester, and was very soon called to Albany to my most intimate friend, who had lost her nearest relative under very distressing circumstances. I came to be with her for a month, but stayed two years, when her husband died suddenly, leaving her alone in the world, and we lived on together eighteen years in a harmony many sisters would have envied.

At the end of that time the home was broken up, my friend married again, and I came here (to the Albany Hospital) at the solicitation of the chief surgeon to “stay a month,” and “be at leisure” if anyone wished to see the place or ask any questions. I am about completing my sixth year here and am far from “being at leisure,” as whatever is repudiated by anyone else as “not my business,” I at once make mine. I have no official name and my position is rather unique.

I have appeared in print only a few times—have two little hymns in the latest edition of The Church Hymnary [1900], Nos. 736 and 985.

by Martha Burt Wright & Anne M. Bancroft
History of the Oread Collegiate Institute (1905)

Featured Hymns:

Here at thy table, Lord

Publications of Hymns:

The Church Hymnary (ed. Edwin A. Bedell)

1st ed. (1890): Archive.org
20th Century ed. (1900): Archive.org

Related Resources:

Martha Burt Wright & Anna M. Bancroft, History of the Oread Collegiate Institute, Worcester, Mass. (1849–1881) with Biographical Sketches (New Haven, CT: Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor Co., 1905), pp. 207–208: Archive.org

May P. Hoyt, Hymnary.org: https://hymnary.org/person/Hoyt_M