BIO. Not many people marry their husband twice. Yet, she was one, with no sign of a divorce in the middle.
Annjanette was a Michigan native, born 1862, her stone listing her son, born 1887, his death, almost 40 years after her own. Aka Nettie and Janett, the latter name reminds us some French had brought their Jeanettes to Scotland, that the name seemed to turn, from Jenett, into Janett/Janet, once crossing in to England.
Baptized as an infant, back in England, at Saltwood in County Kent, her immigrant father would be off to the Civil War, part of a Michigan Regiment, when she was about six weeks old. Called Smeed back in England, immigrating as that in 1842, her grandparents by their 1850 Census at Henrietta NY, were writing their surname here as Smead, helping avoid confusion with a different Smeed family in the same county. Not worried about confusion in Mich., her father, born in England, preferred the old spelling.
Her mother was a Kennicott, born in southwest Mich., where the Potawatomi still have some land. She left both of her parents behind in Michigan, to go off to Oklahoma. Her family maybe returned for her father's death, one sadness followed by another, with her husband, Deyo Hoyt, then to leave her a widow, once back in Kingfisher, OK. Her marriage cut short by his death, time for only two children, the two children would go with her to California.
A story of a talented descendant of son Hugh is below (the bass player who performed as Laurie McAllister, for two all-female groups, The Runaways and The Orchids). An appendix added in 2017 gives some details of her spouse Deyo's historic Hoyt ancestors (New Englanders and New Yorkers).
For her own parents, some Smeeds on her father's side and Kennicott relatives on her mother's side remained back in rural New York, largely unresearched. The two sets may have known of each other back in NY, but her father Thomas married her mother Adelia in Cass County, Mich.
When people move about, graves can be hard to locate. AnnJanette and her children's cemetery lots have been found, as of 2023, thanks to others (named on son Hugh's page).
Though what she called herself varied over her life, her stone says Annjannett.
SAMPLE SOURCE: "Calif. Death Index", naming her parents, archived at FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VPFP-RZF
DETAILS. Back in Michigan, she and Deyo grew up in adjacent counties, then married. Picture four counties, dividing a larger square into about equal pieces. The frequent flatness let surveyors decide most of the county lines, making them straight, not having to follow mountain ridges or the windings of rivers.
Of the northern pair of counties, the Smeeds' initial place was Van Buren County, westward, their retirement place eastward, in the Hoyts' county, of Kalamazoo. Her father's sister, Sarah Broadbridge Smeed, had married a George Wheeler, attended church at a rail town, Mattawan, just west of the county line, so on the Van Buren side, the Wheeler's farm instead on the Kalamazoo side. The county line was something they all crossed frequently. The 1870 Us Census found her parents in Antwerp Township, Van Buren County, their rural area's post office at Lawton, south of Mattawan. Her father describe himself as working on the RR. There had been a financier-sponsored boom in rail, strong in their end of Mich. as one goal had been to copy the old road coming down from Detroit and go around the end of Lake Michigan to Chicago. Many companies put in short lines, set-ups hoping to connect and make longer trips not working whenever the rails were different sizes. There had been no public regulations, no private co-operation in picking a common shared size for rail wheels to travel. A rail bust that was said to start in England made its way to the States, causing the financial crisis of 1873. Many who thought they were living in the place of their dreams, with work they liked, found circumstances changed, so had to move. Her parents' next US Census, the 1880, found her father "making do" as a painter, no longer in Van Buren County. instead at Schoolcraft Twp. in Kalamazoo County. They were near better shopping, bigger churches and the Hoyt family.
Looking instead at the southern pair, Cass County was the one westward, attracting her mother's Kennicotts at their Michigan story's beginning, in 1839. St Joseph County was eastward, her father would die there, in 1895, but was buried up at the Schoolcraft Township Cemetery, in Kalamazoo County.
The southern two counties were the busier ones? The St Joseph River had been named that by the French Jesuits who served the Potawatomi at local native villages. It went through Michigan's southmost tier of counties. Navigable, it had been good for French fur trappers, then for British-descended and other farmers shipping produce, as it went through its last Michigan county (Berrien) and flowed into Lake Michigan. Chicago, small, but growing into a bigger market, was across the lake, best reached, at first, by water transportation.
By 1836, one could avoid boats, canoes and rafts, take the improved Chicago Road (now more or less Hwy 12), recently completed through both counties, to go around the Lake's south end, to Chicago.
Did the opportunities of the finished road attract her mother's Kennicotts? On May 1, 1838, Albert Kennicott filed up in Kalamazoo, at the federal land office there, giving his location as Cass County, paperwork saying he'd finished paying for two spots. (These were both four or five miles past Cass County's east line, one on each side of Hwy 12. He and his wife, unlike the two Smeed siblings coming later, had no other Kennicotts around as a support system. They'd picked well-watered spots, set back a bit from what was then the brand-new Chicago Road. Cattle could be put out to pasture and find their own way to water, no danger of their wandering onto the roadway expected to be busy. Maybe the land was too wet for crops? Some is mapped in modern times as a bit marshy in some low spots by the lakeshores. The north acres were along the west side of Robbins Lake. The south acres fell between the northern ends of two twinned lakes. )
Her father, Mr. Smeed/Smead, had left his parents behind at their farm in New York state (Monroe County). After a last census with them in 1855, he had arrived in southwest Michigan, his marriage to her mother Adelia in 1856. By then, travel was becoming easier, as the railroads increasingly took over what the steamboats had once done. In contrast, her mother's Kennicotts and her spouse's Hoyts had gone to southwest Michigan decades earlier. With no rail yet, people might go on foot or horseback or in wagons.
Her immigrant father, Thomas Smeed, had married Adelia Kennicott, aka Delia. By changing counties, Annjanette could meet and marry Deyo Hoyt. His family did not live in Schoolcraft proper, but had been in rural Prairie Ronde for several generations.
CASS. Cass was said to have been one of the places from which the territory was run, pre-statehood, full of "well-connected" people in both politics and religion. Annjanett's grandparents, Albert and Louisa Kennicott, stayed behind there, with other grown children. Her grandfather Albert died at age 40, the timing only a few years past her marriage to Deyo. Did she worry about dying young? Was it a surprise when Deyo proved the first to die?
VAN BUREN. Her father, Thomas D. Smeed, had come from the Saltwood area of Kent, in England. It had an old castle, not Disney-style, but fort-like, which still stands.
Born not long after the War's start in 1862, did the toddler Annjanette know her father mainly as someone in uniform who visited at times?
She may have developed humor or some other good feature? To better attract his interest, given that her siblings might be doing the same? Maintaining a sense of humor about her beautiful first name was essential, if "everyone" seemed to mis-spell it or mis-pronounce it.
By her 1870 Census, post-War, listed as "Nettie", age eight, the Civil War had been over for five years.
While her cousins may have attended church at Mattawan, Mr. Smeed would be one of three or four elders of a Presbyterian church serving Schoolcraft, more than Schoolcraft, as it was central to the rest. (An 1870 book of Minutes for their Michigan "Synod" listed the minister and rounds of elders. Mr. Smeed had already served for three rounds. Organized geographically, Schoolcraft was under the Kalamazoo Presbytery. A "presbytery" would be analogous to a diocese in some religions. A "synod", larger than the presbytery, was similar to an arch-diocese. Each had a large number of elected officers.)
They survived the crisis of 1873.
She and Deyo married in Schoolcraft in 1881, on July 12. (Did someone mix up this with her birthday, seen in a family tree as also July 12? Or, did she purposely schedule her wedding day, showing a sense of humor? Bringing me double gifts, anyone?)
Deyo called her "Nettie", when asking for the marriage license? That nickname used only unofficially? A couple called the Dibeans researched Michigan marriages, adding newspaper details to official records, to clean-up spellings. They produced highly reliable marriage lists by county. The Dibeans used her full legal name, "Annjanette Smeed", named her groom as "Deyo Manchester Hoyt".
She and Deyo would marry one more time, a decade later, out in Oklahoma Territory, in 1891. She was now "Angenette". Had there been confusion about the Michigan paperwork? They'd lost their personal copy?
Remarriage in Oklahoma would guarantee clear title to any of Deyo's land claims out there, should he die first? However, Deyo would delay filing his own land claim there, until seven years later, 1898. What caused the delay? Her father's death? Was the entry mad only after the final payment had been received, if buying "on time"?
When she took their young children to the Oklahoma Territory, pre-second marriage, it had recently opened for settlement. As in Michigan's pioneer days, presumably the men had gone there first, maybe to find work, maybe to put up buildings, to plant some crops or put up fences.
To make sure any land claims later would be fully legal, all names and places were spelled-out. That second wedding was of record March 5, 1891, in Logan County, Oklahoma. "Mrs. Angenette" Hoyt, of Schoolcraft, Mich., and Deyo M. Hoyt, of Downs, Ok., were again bride and groom:
SOURCE 1: Annjanette, Dibean Marriage Index for Michigan, Kalamazoo County, files.USGWarchives.net/mi/kalamazoo/vitals/marriages/dbn/kzoo-dbn-jun2014-h.txt
SOURCE 2: Nettie, official Mich. record, FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-6SDS-HD8
SOURCE 3: Mrs. Angenette, official Ok. record, FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:9Q97-Y339-7G94:
Annjanette's father died and was buried somewhere in the range Dec. 1895 to Jan. 1896. Records vary as to date.
Her father had the oddity of two Michigan death records, in different counties, adjacent months in different years. Was the first his death, the second his burial? Unlike California, Michigan burials could be delayed in the frozen months.
A small structure at a cemetery was often used to store bodies until relatives could arrive, his coming from NY? The Dec. record was in Schoolcraft, Kalamazoo County, followed a month later, by the second notice, in Jan., in St. Joseph County (Constantine Twp.) Did her father own land in Constantine? Or, it had a minister he preferred for his funeral? ( Her parents and four others named Smeed would be buried in Schoolcraft, as her parents lived their last years near where another daughter had moved.)
Her father's birthplace was listed wrongly as Scotland in the first record. The first mentioned "La Grippe" (a serious kind of flu), the second specified instead how his illness triggered death (the flu ended in heart failure, not pneumonia).
MORE MIGRATIONS. When Deyo finally found land, elsewhere, it was in Kingfisher County. Though other Hoyts filed claims in Logan County, OK, first, as early as 1893, then in Kingfisher, beginning in Feb. of 1895, Devo waited, did not file for his own quarter section until June, 29, 1898. Neighbors named Harrison may have gone to the same two counties. We assume the two families went for ranching, given the waterway there was called Cattle Creek. Was it a surprise when oil was discovered in the state?
Deyo's father was Ransford. He'd come to Mich. the hard way, on horse or foot, with or possibly ahead of the Harrison family, both sets coming from Ohio.
HARRISON & HOYT. The Harrison neighbors inMich and OK were originally from MD. They migrated through NY to OH, before settling on Michigan. The Harrisons may have met Haights while in NY, cousins to Hoyts leaving New England for Ohio.
For the Hoyts, spellings changed. Haight was old, pronounced differently than it looked to British eyes, so sound-it-outs first caused Hoit, then, with dialect changes, Hoyt.
There were several sets of earlier Hoyts, with eventual in-laws called Deyo giving her spouse his first name. With lots of sons, Simon Hoyt's set migrated from old CT by going up the Connecticut River, into Mass and Vt. Deyo's set instead used a different river, up the Delaware, to reach what their officials believed was old Connecticut's frontier.
The problem? The very same king had promised th eland, not just to old Conn., but also to old Pennsylvanians
Some Hoyts and others from CT thus settled in Pennsylvania's Luzerne County, including the family of Rev. Ard Hoyt. The Pennamite wars caused a second contest, with native Pennsylvanians then winning legal wars to claim the contested frontier land. It's been speculated that private deal-making, to create American states out of British colonies, traded Connecticut's "land developers" Pennsylvanian claims for land in northeast Ohio, called the Western Reserve. Conn. would sell much to finance its schools, but people from Conn. maybe had advance notice of what would be sold.
Thus, a Hoyt migration arc goes, from CT, through Penn., to Ohio, some later branching away to Michigan. The Mich. part was not possible until the War of 1812 firmly took Detroit out of the British grasp and put it in American hands. "Naturally" connected to Toronto in geography and history, the political change cut Detroit off from close-by Toronto, but a result was a fort site from which to begin a military route, from Ohio's Great Lakes area, through Detroit, down deep into Michigan, to get to Chicago.
DEYO. Annjanette's Deyo in-laws had been in NY long-term, there from the late 1600s. Preserve the sound, Deyo was not the original spelling. "De Yo" meant from a place that sounded like "Yo", but had been spelled a different way in French.
The first Deyo infant baptisms were in Kingston, NY, at a Dutch Reformed Church. Some NY Deyos were on record later possessing slaves. As a French-speaking people, with Dutch ties, they may have been, or married deeply into, an ethnicity called Walloon.
Walloons were located in a "halfway place", culturally and geographically between regions that were pure French and pure Dutch. They were historically northward of so-called "Huguenots". (Those who did, at the time, put the word "Huguenot" into their church names, for example, at New Rochelle in NY, instead of "Dutch Reformed", were people who had lived for generations in Rochelle, France. Old Rochelle was a Protestant region inside France proper, the rest of which was Catholic. The Rochellians began specifically Huguenot churches inside the NY colony, perhaps as they hoped to avoid cultural conflict with the Dutch, wanting to "signal", by naming themselves as Huguenot, that their services would be in French, not Dutch.)
SMEED. In contrast, Annjenett's father came from an England just finished with debating slavery and abolishing it. Thus, Mr. Smeed is of record with respect to the Civil War, as a soldier on the anti-slavery side. (Has anyone found any records of Hoyt brothers or uncles to Deyo serving in the Civil War from Kalamazoo County?)
Annjanette had once been from Van Buren County, as was Mollie Bell. The two married two Hoyt brothers from Kalamazoo County, Deyo and Owen Hoyt. Did they ever double date? picnic together, go to dances or church together?
1831-1839 LAND CLAIMS. The Hoyts claimed their first land in Michigan, as part of a team of relatives.
One local history says the Harrisons came first, from Springfield, Ohio, arriving 1827-1828, initially led in by a Pottowatamie guide, not saying whether Hoyts were along. Another history says the Hoyts were first, maybe not using a guide. Were they surveyors or with military scouts or a missionary, so not official? Their "too early" entry was several years ahead of land being legally offered through an authorized government land office. "Jumpers" often camped on/staked out desirable sites in advance, then were first in line when the land office opened for legal acquisition.
The BLM.gov web site allows checking the order of the first legal claims of each surname inside a future county subject to military warrant, homesteading, and other land grantings. Note that Ransford Hoyt was Deyo Hoyt's father (maybe named for some branch of in-laws called something like "Raynsford"):
HOYT LANDS, BY FIRST NAME and FIRST DATE:
Ransford C., 4/1831; Stephens, 6/1831;
Theodore S., 4/1837;
John S., Seymour, 5/1839.
Only Stephens Hoyt and John Hoyt bought in the same numbered township as did Ransford Hoyt, a standard township often six miles by six, except were stopped by waterways, etc.
HARRISON LANDS, BY FIRST NAME and FIRST DATE:
Ephraim, Nathan, 4/1831; Bazel, 6/1833;
Andrew, 7/1836;
Eli, Joseph, Lydia, all in 9/1838;
Benjamin, William, 5/1839.
Only Ephraim, Nathan and Bazel Harrison bought in the same numbered township as Ransford Hoyt. Was Bazel their version of Basil?
Deyo's father, Ransford Hoyt, came from Ohio with his father, Stephens Hoy (Deyo's grandfather, he would have been named after some family called Stephens. (The simplification of his name to Stephen Hoyt was probably done by his children after his death in the next decade, who lacked his parents fond memories of anyone named Stephens. )
Michigan was still a territory in 1831, not yet a state.
It's clear the Hoyts and Harrisons were legally present before buying land. Some months earlier, in Dec. 1830, organizers set up elections for Brady Township. It was extra-big, a mother township, including, at first, multiple of the numbered townships, not yet sufficiently populated to have separate elections for officials expected to build more roads and schools. In the first elections, no land owned yet, no claims filed, "Bazel" Harrison and "Stephen" Hoyt were elected as Highway Commissioners (the later historian substituting Stephen.)
These sets of Hoyts and Harrison arrived in the same place, but in steps, earlier ones getting things ready, so more could come. Land acquired in April might see a planting, by May, of seed, on cleared parts, with May 31 being an "almost too late" date for much to fully ripen before the first frost, a corn harvest to follow after the frost-bitten corn had dried out.
Most of those named above bought more land in years after their first purchases. The pattern was to acquire a small bit each time, considerably less than a full "quarter section" (one quarter of a square mile =160 acres). They thus lacked the cash to buy an entire quarter section for each person at the start.
Their having land records in the same county need not mean neighbors with the same surname were relatives, otherwise knew each other. Local histories said Theodore Hoyt, not in the same numbered township (numbered by surveyors before having names), was from Windsor, VT. The Seymour Hoyt family, also not in the same township, with four sons, was from New Haven, VT.
Deyos' Hoyts' particular numbered township later "spun-off" from mega-township Brady, called Prairie Ronde Township. The birth place and death place for many of Deyo's Hoyts, people tended to substitute the name of Schoolcraft, as it had a cemetery and was the post office to which mail would be addressed.
Stephens Hoyt was on record, earlier, with his assumed BROTHER Ransford Hoyt, selling land obtained as mutual heirs of Jeremiah Hoyt, back in Pennsylvania. The assumed brothers were possibly of record together next in Ohio.
Mega-townships subdivided into smaller ones, as population grew, more settlers coming in, plus maturing children starting their own households, a second round, with Deyo's and Anjanette's marriage second round.
First round? Stephen's son Ransford married soon after buying his "starter land", in 1832, to a Mary Hansen/Hanson, first wife, maybe elated to a David M. Hanson, nearby, no other Hansons of record there. David Hanson also acquired land in what become Prairie Ronde Township later, did so 4/1831. Mary must have died, as Ransford married again, in 1838, to Deyo's mother, Harriett Bair. (Not researched, if the name is Scottish, it could be a shortening of Baird. If recently Germanic, it could be a sound-it-out of something like Behr.)
People named Hoyt stayed in the area long enough to bury at least three generations. The Hoyts buried where they first lived.
HOYT HEARTHPLACE & HEARTBREAK
===================================
We will discuss their heartbreak first, then their hearthplace, Prairie Ronde.
Male Tragedy. Lots of boys died. Longer term, in the larger population of the U.S., there were many deaths due to slow-killing "ague", common in the 1830s and 1840s (meaning malaria, quite common in low-lying areas where rain water could pool and stagnate, back when there were more marshes, with stagnant water easily mosquito-infested). Many also died, before antibiotics, from "consumption" (meaning TB, due to live, deadly bacteria caught from unpasteurized, or uncooked, milk, cow's or mother's, slowly contagious in other ways, coughing in over-crowded settings).
Children in one family might die close together, from quick contagions once common (no vaccines yet for diphtheria or whooping cough, serious diseases almost extinct now).
The "too young" Hoyt deaths were predominately boys. Perhaps there was a genetic condition affecting boys? Or, was it simply an accident of timing? if only boys had been born when a wicked contagion came through the township and then the house, then only boys would die?
Deyo lived. He had been born in Feb. 1856, pre-Civil War, near the end of a very large family. Five of his brothers died before he was born. His brother Lawrence, following him, born in 1862, died as a baby, in his year of birth.
Hoyt Survivors. Deyo's first sister, Mary Celeste, 6 years older, stayed local and survived. She married William Davis, then spent the rest of her life in Kalamazoo County. Her death, in 1928, was where she and the rest had been born, Prairie Ronde Twp. (Deyo's lists )
The ones buried locally? The total number of his father's children was said to have reached 13, the seven just listed, plus six more. The rest are found in the 1870 Census in the household of Ransford and Harriet, post-Civil War. All but the eldest would have been too young for the Civil War. The rest would have known who had children afterwards, versus who died.
The handwriting is a bit of a scrawl, so the 1870 census appears to count a "Rumferd" and "Hurries". (These and other "off-spellings" explain why people can be hard to find.) Three older brothers, still alive and in their early 20s, were listed first, then came Deyo, at 14. The scribble of his name looks like "Dey O", with his bit younger brother below, Owen, at 12, and another sister, Stella (proper name Estella), 10, at the end. Prairie Ronde Township, rural, is listed, its Post Office listed but outside the township, in Schoolcraft. The date is June 7, summer typical for censuses back then, not in April, like now, ages true as of that date. Three older brothers all farmed with their father. (ages 27, 24, and 20, the eldest one would stay local, be buried as Lovell R. Hoyt, but his scribbled name in 1870 looked more like S*v*ll, followed by Thomas, then Jonathan.
SOURCE, 1870, with Dey O Hoyt at 14: FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-6G17-Y96
SOURCE, 1860, with De Yoe Hoit at 4: FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GBSS-2NW
Annjanett's Hoyt Children. Seeing both a house and cemetery filled with Hoyt babies and adult siblings, did Annjanette expect to have more than three children? Families, in general, became considerably smaller after the Civil War, as more "moved to town" and space became expensive.
Annjanette's two daughters were said to be Kate Lou and Fannie Zenadie Hoyt, born before son Hugh. Their birth records say "Angenette" was their mother, their father apparently the one filling out the birth records, using just one n, never two. This writer has been told that Genette refers to a mule, could refer to a spinning jenny, used in weaving, while Jeanette is a human name derived from John (Jean in French). By the time Deyo died, the family had compromised, switching his preferred G to a J, but using a spelling never used by the Smeeds, who instead did Ann with two n's. Anjenette was the wifely name listed on HIS old stone, more French-appearing, to match Deyo.
Given that Deyo had so many brothers, Annjenett may have been surprised to have had only one son, Hugh Myron Hoyt (to become Hugh Sr. later).
Deyo's family would go off to Oklahoma. His close-in-age brother Owen would stay in Prairie Ronde? However, after Deyo and Owen died, their sons, Hugh and Jay, would both be found again, living near each other, off in Montana, in Richland County, both reporting there for their 1917-18 registrations for the WW I draft. Jay would list his widowed mother Mollie as his contact in Montana. Jay and Mollie Bell (using mother's maiden name of Bell as her middle name?) both died in Montana, but someone (Jay?) saw to it that Mollie was buried "back home".
Her family In 1900, census in Oklahoma, asking that a precise birth month and year be given:
Deyo, Feb. 1856, age 44, farmer, landowner, mortgage.
Ann J., July, 1866, age 33 [differs from other sources].
Kate, Apri., 1883, age 17.
Fannie, Dec., 1884, age 15.
Hugh, Feb., 1887, 13.
SOURCE: handwritten form, saved at FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-62WQ-6Z5
Had Annjenett tired of explaining her name to Oklahomans who had not grown up with her? She had become "Ann J." The volunteer transcribing from the handwritten record to a typed summary re-presented Deyo as "Dey", seen before.
As to children "ever had", versus number "now living", Annjenett's answer to both was 3. All teens were in school, unusual in that era unless living "in town", giving them more choices for occupation than being a farmer once older. (Perhaps their farm was on the edge of town, in walking distance of the HS? School bus service to the few high schools was rare then, so most rural children without easy HS access dropped out after their local grammar school ended at Gr.6 or Gr.8. The survey covered a school district, ED 107, in both Downs & Logan Townships.)
On Aug 10, 1909, still out in Oklahoma, daughter Fannie, 24, would marry Temple Virgil Truman, 25, an academic. They were smart people, though not all had lots of education. Her age at marriage indicates her education may have earned her a good job. Was she a teacher, something seen later in brother Hugh's side of the family? Her father, Deyo, had died in 1907, so missed the wedding. They were married by Niel Nissen, of the Congregational Church at Cashion, which might have more records. Mr. Truman was born in Crete, Nebr., address at marriage, Kingfisher, OK. She gave Schoolcraft, Mich., as birthplace and Cashion, OK, as residence. In the 1910 Census, they lived near his original home, in Nemeha, Nebraska. Annjenett lived with them, once again, as "Nettie Hoyt", just as on her marriage day, but this time a widow.
SOURCE: Oklahoma Marriage,FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:9Q97-Y3Q3-2HY
Hugh, by the next Census, the 1920, would move to Pasadena, near Los Angeles. As a divorced man, with his own son Hugh Junior present in Censuses, his widowed mother, Annjanette, probably arrived to help care for the son? The son had a sister, Jean Margaret, according to an obituary.
Her husband, Deyo, lies buried in Oklahoma. Her name is carved on his stone. [2023 UPDATE, That was true of his old, original stone, its photo is no longer at his webpage, a modern family stone with less information is now there.]
TALENTED DESCENDANT Laurie Kathleen Hoyt, d. 2010, best known as Laurie McAllister of Hollywood's The Runaways.
Writing her grandmother's story is this writer's way of thanking the great-granddaughter of the beautifully named Annjanette, for making good music.
Laurie died from respiratory complications of asthma, unable to call her sister for help, as she usually would have done. She was briefly of North Hollywood, also of Amsterdam abroad, then went back home, to Coos Bay and Eugene, Oregon. A few years before her own death, the intelligence of the family was seen in her father's obituary, as a college professor of history. An old album of the all-female group called "The Orchids" shows her as a tall and dark-haired bass player. She joined "The Runaways", too late to be listed on that group's last album cover. Exceptional as a bass-player, Laurie was the young woman wearing maroon in the The Runaways video entitled "Saturday Night Special". Its lyrics NOT for children's ears, it was one of their best performances, but under-appreciated. Using her stage name, Laurie McAllister, she was seen stage left of the famed Joan Jett. Her bass-playing was perhaps unusual, but pleased the ear.
The Hoyt family's rhythmic abilities dated back to Zerubabel Hoyt? Son of Walter, grandson of immigrant Simon, the name Zerubabel was itself a four-syllable song. He was said to play the drums to announce meetings and warnings, then later the church bells.
2017 Appendix--Hoyts and Haights, side trips to Vermont and NY:
There were two main lines of her Hoyts, one headed by immigrant Walter (the Hoyt branch of CT); the other, by his half-brother John (the Haight line of NY).
Walter and Zerubabel's Hoyt branch stayed in the Puritan parts of CT for generations. In contrast, John's line left CT early, living above Long Island, in old NY, amidst Quakers, quickly adopting the new spelling of Haight (the local NY dialect had its own spelling rules?) Also viewed as the older spelling of Hoyt!
The two sets crossed paths later, as Vermont welcomed settlers after the American Revolution. Both sets went to Addison County, Vermont, post-Revolution, clearly stayed through the War of 1812, some staying into the 1840s. The Quaker set, the Haights from NY, arrived first, settling in Monkton, more northish. The Hoyts of Puritan CT arrived second, in the same county, going not far south of Monkton, mainly to New Haven, VT. Greater in number than the Haights, the Hoyts arrived in spurts, over a decade, not in the same town. Earlier arrivals apparently went outside New Haven, to places the British still over-ran, pre-War of 1812, so the new "Americans" often retreated. Was New Haven maybe the safest place of several attempted? The bulk of the Hoyts' group came after a stay in Lanesborough, Mass., a stay so brief that just one generation married there. (Their parents had married in CT.)
An Addison county historian would remember Stephen Haight Jr., born in Dutchess County, NY, for his political activity on Monkton's behalf. The same historian would remember Hoyt brothers and in-laws arriving from Lanesborough, Mass. They named their main town New Haven, VT, thereby recalling the hometown of mother Sarah Seymour Hoyt back in CT. They were remembered as a set, as they arrived together to build homesteads and, later, their church, on a road that people came to call Lanesboro Street. Earlier, their frontier corner of Mass. had shared borders with both frontier NY and frontier VT. Shifts in state borders made birth states changeable, thus poorly remembered by a later generation.
When it came time to push the British back behind what Americans regarded as the US-Canadian border, circa War of 1812, several Hoyt brothers were in Stephen Haight's Monkton. They buried several Hoyt children in Monkton, though not in Stephen Haight's Quaker cemetery. However, the earlier sign of Hoyt-Haight contact at Monkton was a marriage, in or before 1806, between two widowed elders, Stephen Haight the Sr. of Monkton and the mother-in-law of a Hoyt brother. (Keturah Baker, aka Catharine, who had first married a Robblee/Rublee. Two relatives, her namesake daughter, the other named Permelia, a presumed cousin, remembered by surviving Hoyts as with surnames Roblea/Ruble, had married brothers Seth M. Hoyt and Uriah Hoyt, respectively. They married back in Lanesborough, where Keturah Baker's first husband had died. Then, at different points, the women moved to Addison County in Vermont, again of record there.)
Old sources remembered all three elders, Keturah Baker, William Robblee/Rublee and Stephan Haight, as having been born in Dutchess County, NY, when it was a mother county, larger than it is now (the two husbands are both named on Keturah's gravestone in Vermont?). They must have known each other back in NY.
They buried a few children there, again, not in the Friend's Cemetery of Stephen Haight. Monkton added jobs briefly, known for bog iron useful for the War A local town on the waterways was building iron-fortified ships, used to defend nearby Lake Champlain, and the Great Lakes beyond.
The Haights of Monkton came from the branch of Walter's half-brother John. Not to stay in CT, John's line had left early for provincial NY, to live amidst Quakers, northish of Long Island. "Haight" pleased the local NY dialect's spelling rules, more than did Hoyt. It was also convenient, signaled their religious change, after many left the Hoyt's Puritanism to became Quakers (Friends).
Those Haights never returned to the Hoyt spelling? However, Stephen Haight's family remained very much connected to Seymour Hoyt's family while both were in Vermont. The Quaker line's Stephen Haight, widowed, married second the also-widowed mother-in-law of two brothers to Seymour, named Uriah and Seth. Stephen's son, by his first wife, was Stephen Haight Jr. He was well-documented in Monkton, Vermont, history, as he served Monkton in local offices and the state legislature, before being sent to DC. To die in DC, he was buried back in Vermont. He, thus, was not the man coming to Michigan as Stephen Hoyt. Junior's son, John T. Haight, an attorney and farmer, then pioneered in Wisconsin before the Civil War.)
MISCELLANEOUS UPDATES
Anna Raynsford Hoyt, first wife to Jedediah Hoyt. She died in Lanesboro/ Lanesborough, Mass., is buried there, along with his second wife, Thankful. He instead died later in Luzerne County, Penn., maybe in 1792. Heirs Stephen Hoyt and Ransford Hoyt (his sons?), arranged the sale of his land in Providence Twp. They were then in Ohio (Logan County), with a Stephen Hoyt, possibly to be the one of Kalamazoo County, while that older Ransford took his family to NY, where he died in a fire. Again, of several named Ransford Hoyt, a younger one would be Stephen Hoyt's son and father to Deyo Hoyt.
Annjanette was a Michigan native, born 1862, her stone listing her son, born 1887, his death, almost 40 years after her own. Aka Nettie and Janett, the latter name reminds us some French had brought their Jeanettes to Scotland, that the name seemed to turn, from Jenett, into Janett/Janet, once crossing in to England.
Baptized as an infant, back in England, at Saltwood in County Kent, her immigrant father would be off to the Civil War, part of a Michigan Regiment, when she was about six weeks old. Called Smeed back in England, immigrating as that in 1842, her grandparents by their 1850 Census at Henrietta NY, were writing their surname here as Smead, helping avoid confusion with a different Smeed family in the same county. Not worried about confusion in Mich., her father, born in England, preferred the old spelling.
Her mother was a Kennicott, born in southwest Mich., where the Potawatomi still have some land. She left both of her parents behind in Michigan, to go off to Oklahoma. Her family maybe returned for her father's death, one sadness followed by another, with her husband, Deyo Hoyt, then to leave her a widow, once back in Kingfisher, OK. Her marriage cut short by his death, time for only two children, the two children would go with her to California.
A story of a talented descendant of son Hugh is below (the bass player who performed as Laurie McAllister, for two all-female groups, The Runaways and The Orchids). An appendix added in 2017 gives some details of her spouse Deyo's historic Hoyt ancestors (New Englanders and New Yorkers).
For her own parents, some Smeeds on her father's side and Kennicott relatives on her mother's side remained back in rural New York, largely unresearched. The two sets may have known of each other back in NY, but her father Thomas married her mother Adelia in Cass County, Mich.
When people move about, graves can be hard to locate. AnnJanette and her children's cemetery lots have been found, as of 2023, thanks to others (named on son Hugh's page).
Though what she called herself varied over her life, her stone says Annjannett.
SAMPLE SOURCE: "Calif. Death Index", naming her parents, archived at FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VPFP-RZF
DETAILS. Back in Michigan, she and Deyo grew up in adjacent counties, then married. Picture four counties, dividing a larger square into about equal pieces. The frequent flatness let surveyors decide most of the county lines, making them straight, not having to follow mountain ridges or the windings of rivers.
Of the northern pair of counties, the Smeeds' initial place was Van Buren County, westward, their retirement place eastward, in the Hoyts' county, of Kalamazoo. Her father's sister, Sarah Broadbridge Smeed, had married a George Wheeler, attended church at a rail town, Mattawan, just west of the county line, so on the Van Buren side, the Wheeler's farm instead on the Kalamazoo side. The county line was something they all crossed frequently. The 1870 Us Census found her parents in Antwerp Township, Van Buren County, their rural area's post office at Lawton, south of Mattawan. Her father describe himself as working on the RR. There had been a financier-sponsored boom in rail, strong in their end of Mich. as one goal had been to copy the old road coming down from Detroit and go around the end of Lake Michigan to Chicago. Many companies put in short lines, set-ups hoping to connect and make longer trips not working whenever the rails were different sizes. There had been no public regulations, no private co-operation in picking a common shared size for rail wheels to travel. A rail bust that was said to start in England made its way to the States, causing the financial crisis of 1873. Many who thought they were living in the place of their dreams, with work they liked, found circumstances changed, so had to move. Her parents' next US Census, the 1880, found her father "making do" as a painter, no longer in Van Buren County. instead at Schoolcraft Twp. in Kalamazoo County. They were near better shopping, bigger churches and the Hoyt family.
Looking instead at the southern pair, Cass County was the one westward, attracting her mother's Kennicotts at their Michigan story's beginning, in 1839. St Joseph County was eastward, her father would die there, in 1895, but was buried up at the Schoolcraft Township Cemetery, in Kalamazoo County.
The southern two counties were the busier ones? The St Joseph River had been named that by the French Jesuits who served the Potawatomi at local native villages. It went through Michigan's southmost tier of counties. Navigable, it had been good for French fur trappers, then for British-descended and other farmers shipping produce, as it went through its last Michigan county (Berrien) and flowed into Lake Michigan. Chicago, small, but growing into a bigger market, was across the lake, best reached, at first, by water transportation.
By 1836, one could avoid boats, canoes and rafts, take the improved Chicago Road (now more or less Hwy 12), recently completed through both counties, to go around the Lake's south end, to Chicago.
Did the opportunities of the finished road attract her mother's Kennicotts? On May 1, 1838, Albert Kennicott filed up in Kalamazoo, at the federal land office there, giving his location as Cass County, paperwork saying he'd finished paying for two spots. (These were both four or five miles past Cass County's east line, one on each side of Hwy 12. He and his wife, unlike the two Smeed siblings coming later, had no other Kennicotts around as a support system. They'd picked well-watered spots, set back a bit from what was then the brand-new Chicago Road. Cattle could be put out to pasture and find their own way to water, no danger of their wandering onto the roadway expected to be busy. Maybe the land was too wet for crops? Some is mapped in modern times as a bit marshy in some low spots by the lakeshores. The north acres were along the west side of Robbins Lake. The south acres fell between the northern ends of two twinned lakes. )
Her father, Mr. Smeed/Smead, had left his parents behind at their farm in New York state (Monroe County). After a last census with them in 1855, he had arrived in southwest Michigan, his marriage to her mother Adelia in 1856. By then, travel was becoming easier, as the railroads increasingly took over what the steamboats had once done. In contrast, her mother's Kennicotts and her spouse's Hoyts had gone to southwest Michigan decades earlier. With no rail yet, people might go on foot or horseback or in wagons.
Her immigrant father, Thomas Smeed, had married Adelia Kennicott, aka Delia. By changing counties, Annjanette could meet and marry Deyo Hoyt. His family did not live in Schoolcraft proper, but had been in rural Prairie Ronde for several generations.
CASS. Cass was said to have been one of the places from which the territory was run, pre-statehood, full of "well-connected" people in both politics and religion. Annjanett's grandparents, Albert and Louisa Kennicott, stayed behind there, with other grown children. Her grandfather Albert died at age 40, the timing only a few years past her marriage to Deyo. Did she worry about dying young? Was it a surprise when Deyo proved the first to die?
VAN BUREN. Her father, Thomas D. Smeed, had come from the Saltwood area of Kent, in England. It had an old castle, not Disney-style, but fort-like, which still stands.
Born not long after the War's start in 1862, did the toddler Annjanette know her father mainly as someone in uniform who visited at times?
She may have developed humor or some other good feature? To better attract his interest, given that her siblings might be doing the same? Maintaining a sense of humor about her beautiful first name was essential, if "everyone" seemed to mis-spell it or mis-pronounce it.
By her 1870 Census, post-War, listed as "Nettie", age eight, the Civil War had been over for five years.
While her cousins may have attended church at Mattawan, Mr. Smeed would be one of three or four elders of a Presbyterian church serving Schoolcraft, more than Schoolcraft, as it was central to the rest. (An 1870 book of Minutes for their Michigan "Synod" listed the minister and rounds of elders. Mr. Smeed had already served for three rounds. Organized geographically, Schoolcraft was under the Kalamazoo Presbytery. A "presbytery" would be analogous to a diocese in some religions. A "synod", larger than the presbytery, was similar to an arch-diocese. Each had a large number of elected officers.)
They survived the crisis of 1873.
She and Deyo married in Schoolcraft in 1881, on July 12. (Did someone mix up this with her birthday, seen in a family tree as also July 12? Or, did she purposely schedule her wedding day, showing a sense of humor? Bringing me double gifts, anyone?)
Deyo called her "Nettie", when asking for the marriage license? That nickname used only unofficially? A couple called the Dibeans researched Michigan marriages, adding newspaper details to official records, to clean-up spellings. They produced highly reliable marriage lists by county. The Dibeans used her full legal name, "Annjanette Smeed", named her groom as "Deyo Manchester Hoyt".
She and Deyo would marry one more time, a decade later, out in Oklahoma Territory, in 1891. She was now "Angenette". Had there been confusion about the Michigan paperwork? They'd lost their personal copy?
Remarriage in Oklahoma would guarantee clear title to any of Deyo's land claims out there, should he die first? However, Deyo would delay filing his own land claim there, until seven years later, 1898. What caused the delay? Her father's death? Was the entry mad only after the final payment had been received, if buying "on time"?
When she took their young children to the Oklahoma Territory, pre-second marriage, it had recently opened for settlement. As in Michigan's pioneer days, presumably the men had gone there first, maybe to find work, maybe to put up buildings, to plant some crops or put up fences.
To make sure any land claims later would be fully legal, all names and places were spelled-out. That second wedding was of record March 5, 1891, in Logan County, Oklahoma. "Mrs. Angenette" Hoyt, of Schoolcraft, Mich., and Deyo M. Hoyt, of Downs, Ok., were again bride and groom:
SOURCE 1: Annjanette, Dibean Marriage Index for Michigan, Kalamazoo County, files.USGWarchives.net/mi/kalamazoo/vitals/marriages/dbn/kzoo-dbn-jun2014-h.txt
SOURCE 2: Nettie, official Mich. record, FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-6SDS-HD8
SOURCE 3: Mrs. Angenette, official Ok. record, FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:9Q97-Y339-7G94:
Annjanette's father died and was buried somewhere in the range Dec. 1895 to Jan. 1896. Records vary as to date.
Her father had the oddity of two Michigan death records, in different counties, adjacent months in different years. Was the first his death, the second his burial? Unlike California, Michigan burials could be delayed in the frozen months.
A small structure at a cemetery was often used to store bodies until relatives could arrive, his coming from NY? The Dec. record was in Schoolcraft, Kalamazoo County, followed a month later, by the second notice, in Jan., in St. Joseph County (Constantine Twp.) Did her father own land in Constantine? Or, it had a minister he preferred for his funeral? ( Her parents and four others named Smeed would be buried in Schoolcraft, as her parents lived their last years near where another daughter had moved.)
Her father's birthplace was listed wrongly as Scotland in the first record. The first mentioned "La Grippe" (a serious kind of flu), the second specified instead how his illness triggered death (the flu ended in heart failure, not pneumonia).
MORE MIGRATIONS. When Deyo finally found land, elsewhere, it was in Kingfisher County. Though other Hoyts filed claims in Logan County, OK, first, as early as 1893, then in Kingfisher, beginning in Feb. of 1895, Devo waited, did not file for his own quarter section until June, 29, 1898. Neighbors named Harrison may have gone to the same two counties. We assume the two families went for ranching, given the waterway there was called Cattle Creek. Was it a surprise when oil was discovered in the state?
Deyo's father was Ransford. He'd come to Mich. the hard way, on horse or foot, with or possibly ahead of the Harrison family, both sets coming from Ohio.
HARRISON & HOYT. The Harrison neighbors inMich and OK were originally from MD. They migrated through NY to OH, before settling on Michigan. The Harrisons may have met Haights while in NY, cousins to Hoyts leaving New England for Ohio.
For the Hoyts, spellings changed. Haight was old, pronounced differently than it looked to British eyes, so sound-it-outs first caused Hoit, then, with dialect changes, Hoyt.
There were several sets of earlier Hoyts, with eventual in-laws called Deyo giving her spouse his first name. With lots of sons, Simon Hoyt's set migrated from old CT by going up the Connecticut River, into Mass and Vt. Deyo's set instead used a different river, up the Delaware, to reach what their officials believed was old Connecticut's frontier.
The problem? The very same king had promised th eland, not just to old Conn., but also to old Pennsylvanians
Some Hoyts and others from CT thus settled in Pennsylvania's Luzerne County, including the family of Rev. Ard Hoyt. The Pennamite wars caused a second contest, with native Pennsylvanians then winning legal wars to claim the contested frontier land. It's been speculated that private deal-making, to create American states out of British colonies, traded Connecticut's "land developers" Pennsylvanian claims for land in northeast Ohio, called the Western Reserve. Conn. would sell much to finance its schools, but people from Conn. maybe had advance notice of what would be sold.
Thus, a Hoyt migration arc goes, from CT, through Penn., to Ohio, some later branching away to Michigan. The Mich. part was not possible until the War of 1812 firmly took Detroit out of the British grasp and put it in American hands. "Naturally" connected to Toronto in geography and history, the political change cut Detroit off from close-by Toronto, but a result was a fort site from which to begin a military route, from Ohio's Great Lakes area, through Detroit, down deep into Michigan, to get to Chicago.
DEYO. Annjanette's Deyo in-laws had been in NY long-term, there from the late 1600s. Preserve the sound, Deyo was not the original spelling. "De Yo" meant from a place that sounded like "Yo", but had been spelled a different way in French.
The first Deyo infant baptisms were in Kingston, NY, at a Dutch Reformed Church. Some NY Deyos were on record later possessing slaves. As a French-speaking people, with Dutch ties, they may have been, or married deeply into, an ethnicity called Walloon.
Walloons were located in a "halfway place", culturally and geographically between regions that were pure French and pure Dutch. They were historically northward of so-called "Huguenots". (Those who did, at the time, put the word "Huguenot" into their church names, for example, at New Rochelle in NY, instead of "Dutch Reformed", were people who had lived for generations in Rochelle, France. Old Rochelle was a Protestant region inside France proper, the rest of which was Catholic. The Rochellians began specifically Huguenot churches inside the NY colony, perhaps as they hoped to avoid cultural conflict with the Dutch, wanting to "signal", by naming themselves as Huguenot, that their services would be in French, not Dutch.)
SMEED. In contrast, Annjenett's father came from an England just finished with debating slavery and abolishing it. Thus, Mr. Smeed is of record with respect to the Civil War, as a soldier on the anti-slavery side. (Has anyone found any records of Hoyt brothers or uncles to Deyo serving in the Civil War from Kalamazoo County?)
Annjanette had once been from Van Buren County, as was Mollie Bell. The two married two Hoyt brothers from Kalamazoo County, Deyo and Owen Hoyt. Did they ever double date? picnic together, go to dances or church together?
1831-1839 LAND CLAIMS. The Hoyts claimed their first land in Michigan, as part of a team of relatives.
One local history says the Harrisons came first, from Springfield, Ohio, arriving 1827-1828, initially led in by a Pottowatamie guide, not saying whether Hoyts were along. Another history says the Hoyts were first, maybe not using a guide. Were they surveyors or with military scouts or a missionary, so not official? Their "too early" entry was several years ahead of land being legally offered through an authorized government land office. "Jumpers" often camped on/staked out desirable sites in advance, then were first in line when the land office opened for legal acquisition.
The BLM.gov web site allows checking the order of the first legal claims of each surname inside a future county subject to military warrant, homesteading, and other land grantings. Note that Ransford Hoyt was Deyo Hoyt's father (maybe named for some branch of in-laws called something like "Raynsford"):
HOYT LANDS, BY FIRST NAME and FIRST DATE:
Ransford C., 4/1831; Stephens, 6/1831;
Theodore S., 4/1837;
John S., Seymour, 5/1839.
Only Stephens Hoyt and John Hoyt bought in the same numbered township as did Ransford Hoyt, a standard township often six miles by six, except were stopped by waterways, etc.
HARRISON LANDS, BY FIRST NAME and FIRST DATE:
Ephraim, Nathan, 4/1831; Bazel, 6/1833;
Andrew, 7/1836;
Eli, Joseph, Lydia, all in 9/1838;
Benjamin, William, 5/1839.
Only Ephraim, Nathan and Bazel Harrison bought in the same numbered township as Ransford Hoyt. Was Bazel their version of Basil?
Deyo's father, Ransford Hoyt, came from Ohio with his father, Stephens Hoy (Deyo's grandfather, he would have been named after some family called Stephens. (The simplification of his name to Stephen Hoyt was probably done by his children after his death in the next decade, who lacked his parents fond memories of anyone named Stephens. )
Michigan was still a territory in 1831, not yet a state.
It's clear the Hoyts and Harrisons were legally present before buying land. Some months earlier, in Dec. 1830, organizers set up elections for Brady Township. It was extra-big, a mother township, including, at first, multiple of the numbered townships, not yet sufficiently populated to have separate elections for officials expected to build more roads and schools. In the first elections, no land owned yet, no claims filed, "Bazel" Harrison and "Stephen" Hoyt were elected as Highway Commissioners (the later historian substituting Stephen.)
These sets of Hoyts and Harrison arrived in the same place, but in steps, earlier ones getting things ready, so more could come. Land acquired in April might see a planting, by May, of seed, on cleared parts, with May 31 being an "almost too late" date for much to fully ripen before the first frost, a corn harvest to follow after the frost-bitten corn had dried out.
Most of those named above bought more land in years after their first purchases. The pattern was to acquire a small bit each time, considerably less than a full "quarter section" (one quarter of a square mile =160 acres). They thus lacked the cash to buy an entire quarter section for each person at the start.
Their having land records in the same county need not mean neighbors with the same surname were relatives, otherwise knew each other. Local histories said Theodore Hoyt, not in the same numbered township (numbered by surveyors before having names), was from Windsor, VT. The Seymour Hoyt family, also not in the same township, with four sons, was from New Haven, VT.
Deyos' Hoyts' particular numbered township later "spun-off" from mega-township Brady, called Prairie Ronde Township. The birth place and death place for many of Deyo's Hoyts, people tended to substitute the name of Schoolcraft, as it had a cemetery and was the post office to which mail would be addressed.
Stephens Hoyt was on record, earlier, with his assumed BROTHER Ransford Hoyt, selling land obtained as mutual heirs of Jeremiah Hoyt, back in Pennsylvania. The assumed brothers were possibly of record together next in Ohio.
Mega-townships subdivided into smaller ones, as population grew, more settlers coming in, plus maturing children starting their own households, a second round, with Deyo's and Anjanette's marriage second round.
First round? Stephen's son Ransford married soon after buying his "starter land", in 1832, to a Mary Hansen/Hanson, first wife, maybe elated to a David M. Hanson, nearby, no other Hansons of record there. David Hanson also acquired land in what become Prairie Ronde Township later, did so 4/1831. Mary must have died, as Ransford married again, in 1838, to Deyo's mother, Harriett Bair. (Not researched, if the name is Scottish, it could be a shortening of Baird. If recently Germanic, it could be a sound-it-out of something like Behr.)
People named Hoyt stayed in the area long enough to bury at least three generations. The Hoyts buried where they first lived.
HOYT HEARTHPLACE & HEARTBREAK
===================================
We will discuss their heartbreak first, then their hearthplace, Prairie Ronde.
Male Tragedy. Lots of boys died. Longer term, in the larger population of the U.S., there were many deaths due to slow-killing "ague", common in the 1830s and 1840s (meaning malaria, quite common in low-lying areas where rain water could pool and stagnate, back when there were more marshes, with stagnant water easily mosquito-infested). Many also died, before antibiotics, from "consumption" (meaning TB, due to live, deadly bacteria caught from unpasteurized, or uncooked, milk, cow's or mother's, slowly contagious in other ways, coughing in over-crowded settings).
Children in one family might die close together, from quick contagions once common (no vaccines yet for diphtheria or whooping cough, serious diseases almost extinct now).
The "too young" Hoyt deaths were predominately boys. Perhaps there was a genetic condition affecting boys? Or, was it simply an accident of timing? if only boys had been born when a wicked contagion came through the township and then the house, then only boys would die?
Deyo lived. He had been born in Feb. 1856, pre-Civil War, near the end of a very large family. Five of his brothers died before he was born. His brother Lawrence, following him, born in 1862, died as a baby, in his year of birth.
Hoyt Survivors. Deyo's first sister, Mary Celeste, 6 years older, stayed local and survived. She married William Davis, then spent the rest of her life in Kalamazoo County. Her death, in 1928, was where she and the rest had been born, Prairie Ronde Twp. (Deyo's lists )
The ones buried locally? The total number of his father's children was said to have reached 13, the seven just listed, plus six more. The rest are found in the 1870 Census in the household of Ransford and Harriet, post-Civil War. All but the eldest would have been too young for the Civil War. The rest would have known who had children afterwards, versus who died.
The handwriting is a bit of a scrawl, so the 1870 census appears to count a "Rumferd" and "Hurries". (These and other "off-spellings" explain why people can be hard to find.) Three older brothers, still alive and in their early 20s, were listed first, then came Deyo, at 14. The scribble of his name looks like "Dey O", with his bit younger brother below, Owen, at 12, and another sister, Stella (proper name Estella), 10, at the end. Prairie Ronde Township, rural, is listed, its Post Office listed but outside the township, in Schoolcraft. The date is June 7, summer typical for censuses back then, not in April, like now, ages true as of that date. Three older brothers all farmed with their father. (ages 27, 24, and 20, the eldest one would stay local, be buried as Lovell R. Hoyt, but his scribbled name in 1870 looked more like S*v*ll, followed by Thomas, then Jonathan.
SOURCE, 1870, with Dey O Hoyt at 14: FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-6G17-Y96
SOURCE, 1860, with De Yoe Hoit at 4: FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GBSS-2NW
Annjanett's Hoyt Children. Seeing both a house and cemetery filled with Hoyt babies and adult siblings, did Annjanette expect to have more than three children? Families, in general, became considerably smaller after the Civil War, as more "moved to town" and space became expensive.
Annjanette's two daughters were said to be Kate Lou and Fannie Zenadie Hoyt, born before son Hugh. Their birth records say "Angenette" was their mother, their father apparently the one filling out the birth records, using just one n, never two. This writer has been told that Genette refers to a mule, could refer to a spinning jenny, used in weaving, while Jeanette is a human name derived from John (Jean in French). By the time Deyo died, the family had compromised, switching his preferred G to a J, but using a spelling never used by the Smeeds, who instead did Ann with two n's. Anjenette was the wifely name listed on HIS old stone, more French-appearing, to match Deyo.
Given that Deyo had so many brothers, Annjenett may have been surprised to have had only one son, Hugh Myron Hoyt (to become Hugh Sr. later).
Deyo's family would go off to Oklahoma. His close-in-age brother Owen would stay in Prairie Ronde? However, after Deyo and Owen died, their sons, Hugh and Jay, would both be found again, living near each other, off in Montana, in Richland County, both reporting there for their 1917-18 registrations for the WW I draft. Jay would list his widowed mother Mollie as his contact in Montana. Jay and Mollie Bell (using mother's maiden name of Bell as her middle name?) both died in Montana, but someone (Jay?) saw to it that Mollie was buried "back home".
Her family In 1900, census in Oklahoma, asking that a precise birth month and year be given:
Deyo, Feb. 1856, age 44, farmer, landowner, mortgage.
Ann J., July, 1866, age 33 [differs from other sources].
Kate, Apri., 1883, age 17.
Fannie, Dec., 1884, age 15.
Hugh, Feb., 1887, 13.
SOURCE: handwritten form, saved at FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-62WQ-6Z5
Had Annjenett tired of explaining her name to Oklahomans who had not grown up with her? She had become "Ann J." The volunteer transcribing from the handwritten record to a typed summary re-presented Deyo as "Dey", seen before.
As to children "ever had", versus number "now living", Annjenett's answer to both was 3. All teens were in school, unusual in that era unless living "in town", giving them more choices for occupation than being a farmer once older. (Perhaps their farm was on the edge of town, in walking distance of the HS? School bus service to the few high schools was rare then, so most rural children without easy HS access dropped out after their local grammar school ended at Gr.6 or Gr.8. The survey covered a school district, ED 107, in both Downs & Logan Townships.)
On Aug 10, 1909, still out in Oklahoma, daughter Fannie, 24, would marry Temple Virgil Truman, 25, an academic. They were smart people, though not all had lots of education. Her age at marriage indicates her education may have earned her a good job. Was she a teacher, something seen later in brother Hugh's side of the family? Her father, Deyo, had died in 1907, so missed the wedding. They were married by Niel Nissen, of the Congregational Church at Cashion, which might have more records. Mr. Truman was born in Crete, Nebr., address at marriage, Kingfisher, OK. She gave Schoolcraft, Mich., as birthplace and Cashion, OK, as residence. In the 1910 Census, they lived near his original home, in Nemeha, Nebraska. Annjenett lived with them, once again, as "Nettie Hoyt", just as on her marriage day, but this time a widow.
SOURCE: Oklahoma Marriage,FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:9Q97-Y3Q3-2HY
Hugh, by the next Census, the 1920, would move to Pasadena, near Los Angeles. As a divorced man, with his own son Hugh Junior present in Censuses, his widowed mother, Annjanette, probably arrived to help care for the son? The son had a sister, Jean Margaret, according to an obituary.
Her husband, Deyo, lies buried in Oklahoma. Her name is carved on his stone. [2023 UPDATE, That was true of his old, original stone, its photo is no longer at his webpage, a modern family stone with less information is now there.]
TALENTED DESCENDANT Laurie Kathleen Hoyt, d. 2010, best known as Laurie McAllister of Hollywood's The Runaways.
Writing her grandmother's story is this writer's way of thanking the great-granddaughter of the beautifully named Annjanette, for making good music.
Laurie died from respiratory complications of asthma, unable to call her sister for help, as she usually would have done. She was briefly of North Hollywood, also of Amsterdam abroad, then went back home, to Coos Bay and Eugene, Oregon. A few years before her own death, the intelligence of the family was seen in her father's obituary, as a college professor of history. An old album of the all-female group called "The Orchids" shows her as a tall and dark-haired bass player. She joined "The Runaways", too late to be listed on that group's last album cover. Exceptional as a bass-player, Laurie was the young woman wearing maroon in the The Runaways video entitled "Saturday Night Special". Its lyrics NOT for children's ears, it was one of their best performances, but under-appreciated. Using her stage name, Laurie McAllister, she was seen stage left of the famed Joan Jett. Her bass-playing was perhaps unusual, but pleased the ear.
The Hoyt family's rhythmic abilities dated back to Zerubabel Hoyt? Son of Walter, grandson of immigrant Simon, the name Zerubabel was itself a four-syllable song. He was said to play the drums to announce meetings and warnings, then later the church bells.
2017 Appendix--Hoyts and Haights, side trips to Vermont and NY:
There were two main lines of her Hoyts, one headed by immigrant Walter (the Hoyt branch of CT); the other, by his half-brother John (the Haight line of NY).
Walter and Zerubabel's Hoyt branch stayed in the Puritan parts of CT for generations. In contrast, John's line left CT early, living above Long Island, in old NY, amidst Quakers, quickly adopting the new spelling of Haight (the local NY dialect had its own spelling rules?) Also viewed as the older spelling of Hoyt!
The two sets crossed paths later, as Vermont welcomed settlers after the American Revolution. Both sets went to Addison County, Vermont, post-Revolution, clearly stayed through the War of 1812, some staying into the 1840s. The Quaker set, the Haights from NY, arrived first, settling in Monkton, more northish. The Hoyts of Puritan CT arrived second, in the same county, going not far south of Monkton, mainly to New Haven, VT. Greater in number than the Haights, the Hoyts arrived in spurts, over a decade, not in the same town. Earlier arrivals apparently went outside New Haven, to places the British still over-ran, pre-War of 1812, so the new "Americans" often retreated. Was New Haven maybe the safest place of several attempted? The bulk of the Hoyts' group came after a stay in Lanesborough, Mass., a stay so brief that just one generation married there. (Their parents had married in CT.)
An Addison county historian would remember Stephen Haight Jr., born in Dutchess County, NY, for his political activity on Monkton's behalf. The same historian would remember Hoyt brothers and in-laws arriving from Lanesborough, Mass. They named their main town New Haven, VT, thereby recalling the hometown of mother Sarah Seymour Hoyt back in CT. They were remembered as a set, as they arrived together to build homesteads and, later, their church, on a road that people came to call Lanesboro Street. Earlier, their frontier corner of Mass. had shared borders with both frontier NY and frontier VT. Shifts in state borders made birth states changeable, thus poorly remembered by a later generation.
When it came time to push the British back behind what Americans regarded as the US-Canadian border, circa War of 1812, several Hoyt brothers were in Stephen Haight's Monkton. They buried several Hoyt children in Monkton, though not in Stephen Haight's Quaker cemetery. However, the earlier sign of Hoyt-Haight contact at Monkton was a marriage, in or before 1806, between two widowed elders, Stephen Haight the Sr. of Monkton and the mother-in-law of a Hoyt brother. (Keturah Baker, aka Catharine, who had first married a Robblee/Rublee. Two relatives, her namesake daughter, the other named Permelia, a presumed cousin, remembered by surviving Hoyts as with surnames Roblea/Ruble, had married brothers Seth M. Hoyt and Uriah Hoyt, respectively. They married back in Lanesborough, where Keturah Baker's first husband had died. Then, at different points, the women moved to Addison County in Vermont, again of record there.)
Old sources remembered all three elders, Keturah Baker, William Robblee/Rublee and Stephan Haight, as having been born in Dutchess County, NY, when it was a mother county, larger than it is now (the two husbands are both named on Keturah's gravestone in Vermont?). They must have known each other back in NY.
They buried a few children there, again, not in the Friend's Cemetery of Stephen Haight. Monkton added jobs briefly, known for bog iron useful for the War A local town on the waterways was building iron-fortified ships, used to defend nearby Lake Champlain, and the Great Lakes beyond.
The Haights of Monkton came from the branch of Walter's half-brother John. Not to stay in CT, John's line had left early for provincial NY, to live amidst Quakers, northish of Long Island. "Haight" pleased the local NY dialect's spelling rules, more than did Hoyt. It was also convenient, signaled their religious change, after many left the Hoyt's Puritanism to became Quakers (Friends).
Those Haights never returned to the Hoyt spelling? However, Stephen Haight's family remained very much connected to Seymour Hoyt's family while both were in Vermont. The Quaker line's Stephen Haight, widowed, married second the also-widowed mother-in-law of two brothers to Seymour, named Uriah and Seth. Stephen's son, by his first wife, was Stephen Haight Jr. He was well-documented in Monkton, Vermont, history, as he served Monkton in local offices and the state legislature, before being sent to DC. To die in DC, he was buried back in Vermont. He, thus, was not the man coming to Michigan as Stephen Hoyt. Junior's son, John T. Haight, an attorney and farmer, then pioneered in Wisconsin before the Civil War.)
MISCELLANEOUS UPDATES
Anna Raynsford Hoyt, first wife to Jedediah Hoyt. She died in Lanesboro/ Lanesborough, Mass., is buried there, along with his second wife, Thankful. He instead died later in Luzerne County, Penn., maybe in 1792. Heirs Stephen Hoyt and Ransford Hoyt (his sons?), arranged the sale of his land in Providence Twp. They were then in Ohio (Logan County), with a Stephen Hoyt, possibly to be the one of Kalamazoo County, while that older Ransford took his family to NY, where he died in a fire. Again, of several named Ransford Hoyt, a younger one would be Stephen Hoyt's son and father to Deyo Hoyt.
BIO. Not many people marry their husband twice. Yet, she was one, with no sign of a divorce in the middle.
Annjanette was a Michigan native, born 1862, her stone listing her son, born 1887, his death, almost 40 years after her own. Aka Nettie and Janett, the latter name reminds us some French had brought their Jeanettes to Scotland, that the name seemed to turn, from Jenett, into Janett/Janet, once crossing in to England.
Baptized as an infant, back in England, at Saltwood in County Kent, her immigrant father would be off to the Civil War, part of a Michigan Regiment, when she was about six weeks old. Called Smeed back in England, immigrating as that in 1842, her grandparents by their 1850 Census at Henrietta NY, were writing their surname here as Smead, helping avoid confusion with a different Smeed family in the same county. Not worried about confusion in Mich., her father, born in England, preferred the old spelling.
Her mother was a Kennicott, born in southwest Mich., where the Potawatomi still have some land. She left both of her parents behind in Michigan, to go off to Oklahoma. Her family maybe returned for her father's death, one sadness followed by another, with her husband, Deyo Hoyt, then to leave her a widow, once back in Kingfisher, OK. Her marriage cut short by his death, time for only two children, the two children would go with her to California.
A story of a talented descendant of son Hugh is below (the bass player who performed as Laurie McAllister, for two all-female groups, The Runaways and The Orchids). An appendix added in 2017 gives some details of her spouse Deyo's historic Hoyt ancestors (New Englanders and New Yorkers).
For her own parents, some Smeeds on her father's side and Kennicott relatives on her mother's side remained back in rural New York, largely unresearched. The two sets may have known of each other back in NY, but her father Thomas married her mother Adelia in Cass County, Mich.
When people move about, graves can be hard to locate. AnnJanette and her children's cemetery lots have been found, as of 2023, thanks to others (named on son Hugh's page).
Though what she called herself varied over her life, her stone says Annjannett.
SAMPLE SOURCE: "Calif. Death Index", naming her parents, archived at FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VPFP-RZF
DETAILS. Back in Michigan, she and Deyo grew up in adjacent counties, then married. Picture four counties, dividing a larger square into about equal pieces. The frequent flatness let surveyors decide most of the county lines, making them straight, not having to follow mountain ridges or the windings of rivers.
Of the northern pair of counties, the Smeeds' initial place was Van Buren County, westward, their retirement place eastward, in the Hoyts' county, of Kalamazoo. Her father's sister, Sarah Broadbridge Smeed, had married a George Wheeler, attended church at a rail town, Mattawan, just west of the county line, so on the Van Buren side, the Wheeler's farm instead on the Kalamazoo side. The county line was something they all crossed frequently. The 1870 Us Census found her parents in Antwerp Township, Van Buren County, their rural area's post office at Lawton, south of Mattawan. Her father describe himself as working on the RR. There had been a financier-sponsored boom in rail, strong in their end of Mich. as one goal had been to copy the old road coming down from Detroit and go around the end of Lake Michigan to Chicago. Many companies put in short lines, set-ups hoping to connect and make longer trips not working whenever the rails were different sizes. There had been no public regulations, no private co-operation in picking a common shared size for rail wheels to travel. A rail bust that was said to start in England made its way to the States, causing the financial crisis of 1873. Many who thought they were living in the place of their dreams, with work they liked, found circumstances changed, so had to move. Her parents' next US Census, the 1880, found her father "making do" as a painter, no longer in Van Buren County. instead at Schoolcraft Twp. in Kalamazoo County. They were near better shopping, bigger churches and the Hoyt family.
Looking instead at the southern pair, Cass County was the one westward, attracting her mother's Kennicotts at their Michigan story's beginning, in 1839. St Joseph County was eastward, her father would die there, in 1895, but was buried up at the Schoolcraft Township Cemetery, in Kalamazoo County.
The southern two counties were the busier ones? The St Joseph River had been named that by the French Jesuits who served the Potawatomi at local native villages. It went through Michigan's southmost tier of counties. Navigable, it had been good for French fur trappers, then for British-descended and other farmers shipping produce, as it went through its last Michigan county (Berrien) and flowed into Lake Michigan. Chicago, small, but growing into a bigger market, was across the lake, best reached, at first, by water transportation.
By 1836, one could avoid boats, canoes and rafts, take the improved Chicago Road (now more or less Hwy 12), recently completed through both counties, to go around the Lake's south end, to Chicago.
Did the opportunities of the finished road attract her mother's Kennicotts? On May 1, 1838, Albert Kennicott filed up in Kalamazoo, at the federal land office there, giving his location as Cass County, paperwork saying he'd finished paying for two spots. (These were both four or five miles past Cass County's east line, one on each side of Hwy 12. He and his wife, unlike the two Smeed siblings coming later, had no other Kennicotts around as a support system. They'd picked well-watered spots, set back a bit from what was then the brand-new Chicago Road. Cattle could be put out to pasture and find their own way to water, no danger of their wandering onto the roadway expected to be busy. Maybe the land was too wet for crops? Some is mapped in modern times as a bit marshy in some low spots by the lakeshores. The north acres were along the west side of Robbins Lake. The south acres fell between the northern ends of two twinned lakes. )
Her father, Mr. Smeed/Smead, had left his parents behind at their farm in New York state (Monroe County). After a last census with them in 1855, he had arrived in southwest Michigan, his marriage to her mother Adelia in 1856. By then, travel was becoming easier, as the railroads increasingly took over what the steamboats had once done. In contrast, her mother's Kennicotts and her spouse's Hoyts had gone to southwest Michigan decades earlier. With no rail yet, people might go on foot or horseback or in wagons.
Her immigrant father, Thomas Smeed, had married Adelia Kennicott, aka Delia. By changing counties, Annjanette could meet and marry Deyo Hoyt. His family did not live in Schoolcraft proper, but had been in rural Prairie Ronde for several generations.
CASS. Cass was said to have been one of the places from which the territory was run, pre-statehood, full of "well-connected" people in both politics and religion. Annjanett's grandparents, Albert and Louisa Kennicott, stayed behind there, with other grown children. Her grandfather Albert died at age 40, the timing only a few years past her marriage to Deyo. Did she worry about dying young? Was it a surprise when Deyo proved the first to die?
VAN BUREN. Her father, Thomas D. Smeed, had come from the Saltwood area of Kent, in England. It had an old castle, not Disney-style, but fort-like, which still stands.
Born not long after the War's start in 1862, did the toddler Annjanette know her father mainly as someone in uniform who visited at times?
She may have developed humor or some other good feature? To better attract his interest, given that her siblings might be doing the same? Maintaining a sense of humor about her beautiful first name was essential, if "everyone" seemed to mis-spell it or mis-pronounce it.
By her 1870 Census, post-War, listed as "Nettie", age eight, the Civil War had been over for five years.
While her cousins may have attended church at Mattawan, Mr. Smeed would be one of three or four elders of a Presbyterian church serving Schoolcraft, more than Schoolcraft, as it was central to the rest. (An 1870 book of Minutes for their Michigan "Synod" listed the minister and rounds of elders. Mr. Smeed had already served for three rounds. Organized geographically, Schoolcraft was under the Kalamazoo Presbytery. A "presbytery" would be analogous to a diocese in some religions. A "synod", larger than the presbytery, was similar to an arch-diocese. Each had a large number of elected officers.)
They survived the crisis of 1873.
She and Deyo married in Schoolcraft in 1881, on July 12. (Did someone mix up this with her birthday, seen in a family tree as also July 12? Or, did she purposely schedule her wedding day, showing a sense of humor? Bringing me double gifts, anyone?)
Deyo called her "Nettie", when asking for the marriage license? That nickname used only unofficially? A couple called the Dibeans researched Michigan marriages, adding newspaper details to official records, to clean-up spellings. They produced highly reliable marriage lists by county. The Dibeans used her full legal name, "Annjanette Smeed", named her groom as "Deyo Manchester Hoyt".
She and Deyo would marry one more time, a decade later, out in Oklahoma Territory, in 1891. She was now "Angenette". Had there been confusion about the Michigan paperwork? They'd lost their personal copy?
Remarriage in Oklahoma would guarantee clear title to any of Deyo's land claims out there, should he die first? However, Deyo would delay filing his own land claim there, until seven years later, 1898. What caused the delay? Her father's death? Was the entry mad only after the final payment had been received, if buying "on time"?
When she took their young children to the Oklahoma Territory, pre-second marriage, it had recently opened for settlement. As in Michigan's pioneer days, presumably the men had gone there first, maybe to find work, maybe to put up buildings, to plant some crops or put up fences.
To make sure any land claims later would be fully legal, all names and places were spelled-out. That second wedding was of record March 5, 1891, in Logan County, Oklahoma. "Mrs. Angenette" Hoyt, of Schoolcraft, Mich., and Deyo M. Hoyt, of Downs, Ok., were again bride and groom:
SOURCE 1: Annjanette, Dibean Marriage Index for Michigan, Kalamazoo County, files.USGWarchives.net/mi/kalamazoo/vitals/marriages/dbn/kzoo-dbn-jun2014-h.txt
SOURCE 2: Nettie, official Mich. record, FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-6SDS-HD8
SOURCE 3: Mrs. Angenette, official Ok. record, FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:9Q97-Y339-7G94:
Annjanette's father died and was buried somewhere in the range Dec. 1895 to Jan. 1896. Records vary as to date.
Her father had the oddity of two Michigan death records, in different counties, adjacent months in different years. Was the first his death, the second his burial? Unlike California, Michigan burials could be delayed in the frozen months.
A small structure at a cemetery was often used to store bodies until relatives could arrive, his coming from NY? The Dec. record was in Schoolcraft, Kalamazoo County, followed a month later, by the second notice, in Jan., in St. Joseph County (Constantine Twp.) Did her father own land in Constantine? Or, it had a minister he preferred for his funeral? ( Her parents and four others named Smeed would be buried in Schoolcraft, as her parents lived their last years near where another daughter had moved.)
Her father's birthplace was listed wrongly as Scotland in the first record. The first mentioned "La Grippe" (a serious kind of flu), the second specified instead how his illness triggered death (the flu ended in heart failure, not pneumonia).
MORE MIGRATIONS. When Deyo finally found land, elsewhere, it was in Kingfisher County. Though other Hoyts filed claims in Logan County, OK, first, as early as 1893, then in Kingfisher, beginning in Feb. of 1895, Devo waited, did not file for his own quarter section until June, 29, 1898. Neighbors named Harrison may have gone to the same two counties. We assume the two families went for ranching, given the waterway there was called Cattle Creek. Was it a surprise when oil was discovered in the state?
Deyo's father was Ransford. He'd come to Mich. the hard way, on horse or foot, with or possibly ahead of the Harrison family, both sets coming from Ohio.
HARRISON & HOYT. The Harrison neighbors inMich and OK were originally from MD. They migrated through NY to OH, before settling on Michigan. The Harrisons may have met Haights while in NY, cousins to Hoyts leaving New England for Ohio.
For the Hoyts, spellings changed. Haight was old, pronounced differently than it looked to British eyes, so sound-it-outs first caused Hoit, then, with dialect changes, Hoyt.
There were several sets of earlier Hoyts, with eventual in-laws called Deyo giving her spouse his first name. With lots of sons, Simon Hoyt's set migrated from old CT by going up the Connecticut River, into Mass and Vt. Deyo's set instead used a different river, up the Delaware, to reach what their officials believed was old Connecticut's frontier.
The problem? The very same king had promised th eland, not just to old Conn., but also to old Pennsylvanians
Some Hoyts and others from CT thus settled in Pennsylvania's Luzerne County, including the family of Rev. Ard Hoyt. The Pennamite wars caused a second contest, with native Pennsylvanians then winning legal wars to claim the contested frontier land. It's been speculated that private deal-making, to create American states out of British colonies, traded Connecticut's "land developers" Pennsylvanian claims for land in northeast Ohio, called the Western Reserve. Conn. would sell much to finance its schools, but people from Conn. maybe had advance notice of what would be sold.
Thus, a Hoyt migration arc goes, from CT, through Penn., to Ohio, some later branching away to Michigan. The Mich. part was not possible until the War of 1812 firmly took Detroit out of the British grasp and put it in American hands. "Naturally" connected to Toronto in geography and history, the political change cut Detroit off from close-by Toronto, but a result was a fort site from which to begin a military route, from Ohio's Great Lakes area, through Detroit, down deep into Michigan, to get to Chicago.
DEYO. Annjanette's Deyo in-laws had been in NY long-term, there from the late 1600s. Preserve the sound, Deyo was not the original spelling. "De Yo" meant from a place that sounded like "Yo", but had been spelled a different way in French.
The first Deyo infant baptisms were in Kingston, NY, at a Dutch Reformed Church. Some NY Deyos were on record later possessing slaves. As a French-speaking people, with Dutch ties, they may have been, or married deeply into, an ethnicity called Walloon.
Walloons were located in a "halfway place", culturally and geographically between regions that were pure French and pure Dutch. They were historically northward of so-called "Huguenots". (Those who did, at the time, put the word "Huguenot" into their church names, for example, at New Rochelle in NY, instead of "Dutch Reformed", were people who had lived for generations in Rochelle, France. Old Rochelle was a Protestant region inside France proper, the rest of which was Catholic. The Rochellians began specifically Huguenot churches inside the NY colony, perhaps as they hoped to avoid cultural conflict with the Dutch, wanting to "signal", by naming themselves as Huguenot, that their services would be in French, not Dutch.)
SMEED. In contrast, Annjenett's father came from an England just finished with debating slavery and abolishing it. Thus, Mr. Smeed is of record with respect to the Civil War, as a soldier on the anti-slavery side. (Has anyone found any records of Hoyt brothers or uncles to Deyo serving in the Civil War from Kalamazoo County?)
Annjanette had once been from Van Buren County, as was Mollie Bell. The two married two Hoyt brothers from Kalamazoo County, Deyo and Owen Hoyt. Did they ever double date? picnic together, go to dances or church together?
1831-1839 LAND CLAIMS. The Hoyts claimed their first land in Michigan, as part of a team of relatives.
One local history says the Harrisons came first, from Springfield, Ohio, arriving 1827-1828, initially led in by a Pottowatamie guide, not saying whether Hoyts were along. Another history says the Hoyts were first, maybe not using a guide. Were they surveyors or with military scouts or a missionary, so not official? Their "too early" entry was several years ahead of land being legally offered through an authorized government land office. "Jumpers" often camped on/staked out desirable sites in advance, then were first in line when the land office opened for legal acquisition.
The BLM.gov web site allows checking the order of the first legal claims of each surname inside a future county subject to military warrant, homesteading, and other land grantings. Note that Ransford Hoyt was Deyo Hoyt's father (maybe named for some branch of in-laws called something like "Raynsford"):
HOYT LANDS, BY FIRST NAME and FIRST DATE:
Ransford C., 4/1831; Stephens, 6/1831;
Theodore S., 4/1837;
John S., Seymour, 5/1839.
Only Stephens Hoyt and John Hoyt bought in the same numbered township as did Ransford Hoyt, a standard township often six miles by six, except were stopped by waterways, etc.
HARRISON LANDS, BY FIRST NAME and FIRST DATE:
Ephraim, Nathan, 4/1831; Bazel, 6/1833;
Andrew, 7/1836;
Eli, Joseph, Lydia, all in 9/1838;
Benjamin, William, 5/1839.
Only Ephraim, Nathan and Bazel Harrison bought in the same numbered township as Ransford Hoyt. Was Bazel their version of Basil?
Deyo's father, Ransford Hoyt, came from Ohio with his father, Stephens Hoy (Deyo's grandfather, he would have been named after some family called Stephens. (The simplification of his name to Stephen Hoyt was probably done by his children after his death in the next decade, who lacked his parents fond memories of anyone named Stephens. )
Michigan was still a territory in 1831, not yet a state.
It's clear the Hoyts and Harrisons were legally present before buying land. Some months earlier, in Dec. 1830, organizers set up elections for Brady Township. It was extra-big, a mother township, including, at first, multiple of the numbered townships, not yet sufficiently populated to have separate elections for officials expected to build more roads and schools. In the first elections, no land owned yet, no claims filed, "Bazel" Harrison and "Stephen" Hoyt were elected as Highway Commissioners (the later historian substituting Stephen.)
These sets of Hoyts and Harrison arrived in the same place, but in steps, earlier ones getting things ready, so more could come. Land acquired in April might see a planting, by May, of seed, on cleared parts, with May 31 being an "almost too late" date for much to fully ripen before the first frost, a corn harvest to follow after the frost-bitten corn had dried out.
Most of those named above bought more land in years after their first purchases. The pattern was to acquire a small bit each time, considerably less than a full "quarter section" (one quarter of a square mile =160 acres). They thus lacked the cash to buy an entire quarter section for each person at the start.
Their having land records in the same county need not mean neighbors with the same surname were relatives, otherwise knew each other. Local histories said Theodore Hoyt, not in the same numbered township (numbered by surveyors before having names), was from Windsor, VT. The Seymour Hoyt family, also not in the same township, with four sons, was from New Haven, VT.
Deyos' Hoyts' particular numbered township later "spun-off" from mega-township Brady, called Prairie Ronde Township. The birth place and death place for many of Deyo's Hoyts, people tended to substitute the name of Schoolcraft, as it had a cemetery and was the post office to which mail would be addressed.
Stephens Hoyt was on record, earlier, with his assumed BROTHER Ransford Hoyt, selling land obtained as mutual heirs of Jeremiah Hoyt, back in Pennsylvania. The assumed brothers were possibly of record together next in Ohio.
Mega-townships subdivided into smaller ones, as population grew, more settlers coming in, plus maturing children starting their own households, a second round, with Deyo's and Anjanette's marriage second round.
First round? Stephen's son Ransford married soon after buying his "starter land", in 1832, to a Mary Hansen/Hanson, first wife, maybe elated to a David M. Hanson, nearby, no other Hansons of record there. David Hanson also acquired land in what become Prairie Ronde Township later, did so 4/1831. Mary must have died, as Ransford married again, in 1838, to Deyo's mother, Harriett Bair. (Not researched, if the name is Scottish, it could be a shortening of Baird. If recently Germanic, it could be a sound-it-out of something like Behr.)
People named Hoyt stayed in the area long enough to bury at least three generations. The Hoyts buried where they first lived.
HOYT HEARTHPLACE & HEARTBREAK
===================================
We will discuss their heartbreak first, then their hearthplace, Prairie Ronde.
Male Tragedy. Lots of boys died. Longer term, in the larger population of the U.S., there were many deaths due to slow-killing "ague", common in the 1830s and 1840s (meaning malaria, quite common in low-lying areas where rain water could pool and stagnate, back when there were more marshes, with stagnant water easily mosquito-infested). Many also died, before antibiotics, from "consumption" (meaning TB, due to live, deadly bacteria caught from unpasteurized, or uncooked, milk, cow's or mother's, slowly contagious in other ways, coughing in over-crowded settings).
Children in one family might die close together, from quick contagions once common (no vaccines yet for diphtheria or whooping cough, serious diseases almost extinct now).
The "too young" Hoyt deaths were predominately boys. Perhaps there was a genetic condition affecting boys? Or, was it simply an accident of timing? if only boys had been born when a wicked contagion came through the township and then the house, then only boys would die?
Deyo lived. He had been born in Feb. 1856, pre-Civil War, near the end of a very large family. Five of his brothers died before he was born. His brother Lawrence, following him, born in 1862, died as a baby, in his year of birth.
Hoyt Survivors. Deyo's first sister, Mary Celeste, 6 years older, stayed local and survived. She married William Davis, then spent the rest of her life in Kalamazoo County. Her death, in 1928, was where she and the rest had been born, Prairie Ronde Twp. (Deyo's lists )
The ones buried locally? The total number of his father's children was said to have reached 13, the seven just listed, plus six more. The rest are found in the 1870 Census in the household of Ransford and Harriet, post-Civil War. All but the eldest would have been too young for the Civil War. The rest would have known who had children afterwards, versus who died.
The handwriting is a bit of a scrawl, so the 1870 census appears to count a "Rumferd" and "Hurries". (These and other "off-spellings" explain why people can be hard to find.) Three older brothers, still alive and in their early 20s, were listed first, then came Deyo, at 14. The scribble of his name looks like "Dey O", with his bit younger brother below, Owen, at 12, and another sister, Stella (proper name Estella), 10, at the end. Prairie Ronde Township, rural, is listed, its Post Office listed but outside the township, in Schoolcraft. The date is June 7, summer typical for censuses back then, not in April, like now, ages true as of that date. Three older brothers all farmed with their father. (ages 27, 24, and 20, the eldest one would stay local, be buried as Lovell R. Hoyt, but his scribbled name in 1870 looked more like S*v*ll, followed by Thomas, then Jonathan.
SOURCE, 1870, with Dey O Hoyt at 14: FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-6G17-Y96
SOURCE, 1860, with De Yoe Hoit at 4: FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GBSS-2NW
Annjanett's Hoyt Children. Seeing both a house and cemetery filled with Hoyt babies and adult siblings, did Annjanette expect to have more than three children? Families, in general, became considerably smaller after the Civil War, as more "moved to town" and space became expensive.
Annjanette's two daughters were said to be Kate Lou and Fannie Zenadie Hoyt, born before son Hugh. Their birth records say "Angenette" was their mother, their father apparently the one filling out the birth records, using just one n, never two. This writer has been told that Genette refers to a mule, could refer to a spinning jenny, used in weaving, while Jeanette is a human name derived from John (Jean in French). By the time Deyo died, the family had compromised, switching his preferred G to a J, but using a spelling never used by the Smeeds, who instead did Ann with two n's. Anjenette was the wifely name listed on HIS old stone, more French-appearing, to match Deyo.
Given that Deyo had so many brothers, Annjenett may have been surprised to have had only one son, Hugh Myron Hoyt (to become Hugh Sr. later).
Deyo's family would go off to Oklahoma. His close-in-age brother Owen would stay in Prairie Ronde? However, after Deyo and Owen died, their sons, Hugh and Jay, would both be found again, living near each other, off in Montana, in Richland County, both reporting there for their 1917-18 registrations for the WW I draft. Jay would list his widowed mother Mollie as his contact in Montana. Jay and Mollie Bell (using mother's maiden name of Bell as her middle name?) both died in Montana, but someone (Jay?) saw to it that Mollie was buried "back home".
Her family In 1900, census in Oklahoma, asking that a precise birth month and year be given:
Deyo, Feb. 1856, age 44, farmer, landowner, mortgage.
Ann J., July, 1866, age 33 [differs from other sources].
Kate, Apri., 1883, age 17.
Fannie, Dec., 1884, age 15.
Hugh, Feb., 1887, 13.
SOURCE: handwritten form, saved at FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-62WQ-6Z5
Had Annjenett tired of explaining her name to Oklahomans who had not grown up with her? She had become "Ann J." The volunteer transcribing from the handwritten record to a typed summary re-presented Deyo as "Dey", seen before.
As to children "ever had", versus number "now living", Annjenett's answer to both was 3. All teens were in school, unusual in that era unless living "in town", giving them more choices for occupation than being a farmer once older. (Perhaps their farm was on the edge of town, in walking distance of the HS? School bus service to the few high schools was rare then, so most rural children without easy HS access dropped out after their local grammar school ended at Gr.6 or Gr.8. The survey covered a school district, ED 107, in both Downs & Logan Townships.)
On Aug 10, 1909, still out in Oklahoma, daughter Fannie, 24, would marry Temple Virgil Truman, 25, an academic. They were smart people, though not all had lots of education. Her age at marriage indicates her education may have earned her a good job. Was she a teacher, something seen later in brother Hugh's side of the family? Her father, Deyo, had died in 1907, so missed the wedding. They were married by Niel Nissen, of the Congregational Church at Cashion, which might have more records. Mr. Truman was born in Crete, Nebr., address at marriage, Kingfisher, OK. She gave Schoolcraft, Mich., as birthplace and Cashion, OK, as residence. In the 1910 Census, they lived near his original home, in Nemeha, Nebraska. Annjenett lived with them, once again, as "Nettie Hoyt", just as on her marriage day, but this time a widow.
SOURCE: Oklahoma Marriage,FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:9Q97-Y3Q3-2HY
Hugh, by the next Census, the 1920, would move to Pasadena, near Los Angeles. As a divorced man, with his own son Hugh Junior present in Censuses, his widowed mother, Annjanette, probably arrived to help care for the son? The son had a sister, Jean Margaret, according to an obituary.
Her husband, Deyo, lies buried in Oklahoma. Her name is carved on his stone. [2023 UPDATE, That was true of his old, original stone, its photo is no longer at his webpage, a modern family stone with less information is now there.]
TALENTED DESCENDANT Laurie Kathleen Hoyt, d. 2010, best known as Laurie McAllister of Hollywood's The Runaways.
Writing her grandmother's story is this writer's way of thanking the great-granddaughter of the beautifully named Annjanette, for making good music.
Laurie died from respiratory complications of asthma, unable to call her sister for help, as she usually would have done. She was briefly of North Hollywood, also of Amsterdam abroad, then went back home, to Coos Bay and Eugene, Oregon. A few years before her own death, the intelligence of the family was seen in her father's obituary, as a college professor of history. An old album of the all-female group called "The Orchids" shows her as a tall and dark-haired bass player. She joined "The Runaways", too late to be listed on that group's last album cover. Exceptional as a bass-player, Laurie was the young woman wearing maroon in the The Runaways video entitled "Saturday Night Special". Its lyrics NOT for children's ears, it was one of their best performances, but under-appreciated. Using her stage name, Laurie McAllister, she was seen stage left of the famed Joan Jett. Her bass-playing was perhaps unusual, but pleased the ear.
The Hoyt family's rhythmic abilities dated back to Zerubabel Hoyt? Son of Walter, grandson of immigrant Simon, the name Zerubabel was itself a four-syllable song. He was said to play the drums to announce meetings and warnings, then later the church bells.
2017 Appendix--Hoyts and Haights, side trips to Vermont and NY:
There were two main lines of her Hoyts, one headed by immigrant Walter (the Hoyt branch of CT); the other, by his half-brother John (the Haight line of NY).
Walter and Zerubabel's Hoyt branch stayed in the Puritan parts of CT for generations. In contrast, John's line left CT early, living above Long Island, in old NY, amidst Quakers, quickly adopting the new spelling of Haight (the local NY dialect had its own spelling rules?) Also viewed as the older spelling of Hoyt!
The two sets crossed paths later, as Vermont welcomed settlers after the American Revolution. Both sets went to Addison County, Vermont, post-Revolution, clearly stayed through the War of 1812, some staying into the 1840s. The Quaker set, the Haights from NY, arrived first, settling in Monkton, more northish. The Hoyts of Puritan CT arrived second, in the same county, going not far south of Monkton, mainly to New Haven, VT. Greater in number than the Haights, the Hoyts arrived in spurts, over a decade, not in the same town. Earlier arrivals apparently went outside New Haven, to places the British still over-ran, pre-War of 1812, so the new "Americans" often retreated. Was New Haven maybe the safest place of several attempted? The bulk of the Hoyts' group came after a stay in Lanesborough, Mass., a stay so brief that just one generation married there. (Their parents had married in CT.)
An Addison county historian would remember Stephen Haight Jr., born in Dutchess County, NY, for his political activity on Monkton's behalf. The same historian would remember Hoyt brothers and in-laws arriving from Lanesborough, Mass. They named their main town New Haven, VT, thereby recalling the hometown of mother Sarah Seymour Hoyt back in CT. They were remembered as a set, as they arrived together to build homesteads and, later, their church, on a road that people came to call Lanesboro Street. Earlier, their frontier corner of Mass. had shared borders with both frontier NY and frontier VT. Shifts in state borders made birth states changeable, thus poorly remembered by a later generation.
When it came time to push the British back behind what Americans regarded as the US-Canadian border, circa War of 1812, several Hoyt brothers were in Stephen Haight's Monkton. They buried several Hoyt children in Monkton, though not in Stephen Haight's Quaker cemetery. However, the earlier sign of Hoyt-Haight contact at Monkton was a marriage, in or before 1806, between two widowed elders, Stephen Haight the Sr. of Monkton and the mother-in-law of a Hoyt brother. (Keturah Baker, aka Catharine, who had first married a Robblee/Rublee. Two relatives, her namesake daughter, the other named Permelia, a presumed cousin, remembered by surviving Hoyts as with surnames Roblea/Ruble, had married brothers Seth M. Hoyt and Uriah Hoyt, respectively. They married back in Lanesborough, where Keturah Baker's first husband had died. Then, at different points, the women moved to Addison County in Vermont, again of record there.)
Old sources remembered all three elders, Keturah Baker, William Robblee/Rublee and Stephan Haight, as having been born in Dutchess County, NY, when it was a mother county, larger than it is now (the two husbands are both named on Keturah's gravestone in Vermont?). They must have known each other back in NY.
They buried a few children there, again, not in the Friend's Cemetery of Stephen Haight. Monkton added jobs briefly, known for bog iron useful for the War A local town on the waterways was building iron-fortified ships, used to defend nearby Lake Champlain, and the Great Lakes beyond.
The Haights of Monkton came from the branch of Walter's half-brother John. Not to stay in CT, John's line had left early for provincial NY, to live amidst Quakers, northish of Long Island. "Haight" pleased the local NY dialect's spelling rules, more than did Hoyt. It was also convenient, signaled their religious change, after many left the Hoyt's Puritanism to became Quakers (Friends).
Those Haights never returned to the Hoyt spelling? However, Stephen Haight's family remained very much connected to Seymour Hoyt's family while both were in Vermont. The Quaker line's Stephen Haight, widowed, married second the also-widowed mother-in-law of two brothers to Seymour, named Uriah and Seth. Stephen's son, by his first wife, was Stephen Haight Jr. He was well-documented in Monkton, Vermont, history, as he served Monkton in local offices and the state legislature, before being sent to DC. To die in DC, he was buried back in Vermont. He, thus, was not the man coming to Michigan as Stephen Hoyt. Junior's son, John T. Haight, an attorney and farmer, then pioneered in Wisconsin before the Civil War.)
MISCELLANEOUS UPDATES
Anna Raynsford Hoyt, first wife to Jedediah Hoyt. She died in Lanesboro/ Lanesborough, Mass., is buried there, along with his second wife, Thankful. He instead died later in Luzerne County, Penn., maybe in 1792. Heirs Stephen Hoyt and Ransford Hoyt (his sons?), arranged the sale of his land in Providence Twp. They were then in Ohio (Logan County), with a Stephen Hoyt, possibly to be the one of Kalamazoo County, while that older Ransford took his family to NY, where he died in a fire. Again, of several named Ransford Hoyt, a younger one would be Stephen Hoyt's son and father to Deyo Hoyt.
Annjanette was a Michigan native, born 1862, her stone listing her son, born 1887, his death, almost 40 years after her own. Aka Nettie and Janett, the latter name reminds us some French had brought their Jeanettes to Scotland, that the name seemed to turn, from Jenett, into Janett/Janet, once crossing in to England.
Baptized as an infant, back in England, at Saltwood in County Kent, her immigrant father would be off to the Civil War, part of a Michigan Regiment, when she was about six weeks old. Called Smeed back in England, immigrating as that in 1842, her grandparents by their 1850 Census at Henrietta NY, were writing their surname here as Smead, helping avoid confusion with a different Smeed family in the same county. Not worried about confusion in Mich., her father, born in England, preferred the old spelling.
Her mother was a Kennicott, born in southwest Mich., where the Potawatomi still have some land. She left both of her parents behind in Michigan, to go off to Oklahoma. Her family maybe returned for her father's death, one sadness followed by another, with her husband, Deyo Hoyt, then to leave her a widow, once back in Kingfisher, OK. Her marriage cut short by his death, time for only two children, the two children would go with her to California.
A story of a talented descendant of son Hugh is below (the bass player who performed as Laurie McAllister, for two all-female groups, The Runaways and The Orchids). An appendix added in 2017 gives some details of her spouse Deyo's historic Hoyt ancestors (New Englanders and New Yorkers).
For her own parents, some Smeeds on her father's side and Kennicott relatives on her mother's side remained back in rural New York, largely unresearched. The two sets may have known of each other back in NY, but her father Thomas married her mother Adelia in Cass County, Mich.
When people move about, graves can be hard to locate. AnnJanette and her children's cemetery lots have been found, as of 2023, thanks to others (named on son Hugh's page).
Though what she called herself varied over her life, her stone says Annjannett.
SAMPLE SOURCE: "Calif. Death Index", naming her parents, archived at FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VPFP-RZF
DETAILS. Back in Michigan, she and Deyo grew up in adjacent counties, then married. Picture four counties, dividing a larger square into about equal pieces. The frequent flatness let surveyors decide most of the county lines, making them straight, not having to follow mountain ridges or the windings of rivers.
Of the northern pair of counties, the Smeeds' initial place was Van Buren County, westward, their retirement place eastward, in the Hoyts' county, of Kalamazoo. Her father's sister, Sarah Broadbridge Smeed, had married a George Wheeler, attended church at a rail town, Mattawan, just west of the county line, so on the Van Buren side, the Wheeler's farm instead on the Kalamazoo side. The county line was something they all crossed frequently. The 1870 Us Census found her parents in Antwerp Township, Van Buren County, their rural area's post office at Lawton, south of Mattawan. Her father describe himself as working on the RR. There had been a financier-sponsored boom in rail, strong in their end of Mich. as one goal had been to copy the old road coming down from Detroit and go around the end of Lake Michigan to Chicago. Many companies put in short lines, set-ups hoping to connect and make longer trips not working whenever the rails were different sizes. There had been no public regulations, no private co-operation in picking a common shared size for rail wheels to travel. A rail bust that was said to start in England made its way to the States, causing the financial crisis of 1873. Many who thought they were living in the place of their dreams, with work they liked, found circumstances changed, so had to move. Her parents' next US Census, the 1880, found her father "making do" as a painter, no longer in Van Buren County. instead at Schoolcraft Twp. in Kalamazoo County. They were near better shopping, bigger churches and the Hoyt family.
Looking instead at the southern pair, Cass County was the one westward, attracting her mother's Kennicotts at their Michigan story's beginning, in 1839. St Joseph County was eastward, her father would die there, in 1895, but was buried up at the Schoolcraft Township Cemetery, in Kalamazoo County.
The southern two counties were the busier ones? The St Joseph River had been named that by the French Jesuits who served the Potawatomi at local native villages. It went through Michigan's southmost tier of counties. Navigable, it had been good for French fur trappers, then for British-descended and other farmers shipping produce, as it went through its last Michigan county (Berrien) and flowed into Lake Michigan. Chicago, small, but growing into a bigger market, was across the lake, best reached, at first, by water transportation.
By 1836, one could avoid boats, canoes and rafts, take the improved Chicago Road (now more or less Hwy 12), recently completed through both counties, to go around the Lake's south end, to Chicago.
Did the opportunities of the finished road attract her mother's Kennicotts? On May 1, 1838, Albert Kennicott filed up in Kalamazoo, at the federal land office there, giving his location as Cass County, paperwork saying he'd finished paying for two spots. (These were both four or five miles past Cass County's east line, one on each side of Hwy 12. He and his wife, unlike the two Smeed siblings coming later, had no other Kennicotts around as a support system. They'd picked well-watered spots, set back a bit from what was then the brand-new Chicago Road. Cattle could be put out to pasture and find their own way to water, no danger of their wandering onto the roadway expected to be busy. Maybe the land was too wet for crops? Some is mapped in modern times as a bit marshy in some low spots by the lakeshores. The north acres were along the west side of Robbins Lake. The south acres fell between the northern ends of two twinned lakes. )
Her father, Mr. Smeed/Smead, had left his parents behind at their farm in New York state (Monroe County). After a last census with them in 1855, he had arrived in southwest Michigan, his marriage to her mother Adelia in 1856. By then, travel was becoming easier, as the railroads increasingly took over what the steamboats had once done. In contrast, her mother's Kennicotts and her spouse's Hoyts had gone to southwest Michigan decades earlier. With no rail yet, people might go on foot or horseback or in wagons.
Her immigrant father, Thomas Smeed, had married Adelia Kennicott, aka Delia. By changing counties, Annjanette could meet and marry Deyo Hoyt. His family did not live in Schoolcraft proper, but had been in rural Prairie Ronde for several generations.
CASS. Cass was said to have been one of the places from which the territory was run, pre-statehood, full of "well-connected" people in both politics and religion. Annjanett's grandparents, Albert and Louisa Kennicott, stayed behind there, with other grown children. Her grandfather Albert died at age 40, the timing only a few years past her marriage to Deyo. Did she worry about dying young? Was it a surprise when Deyo proved the first to die?
VAN BUREN. Her father, Thomas D. Smeed, had come from the Saltwood area of Kent, in England. It had an old castle, not Disney-style, but fort-like, which still stands.
Born not long after the War's start in 1862, did the toddler Annjanette know her father mainly as someone in uniform who visited at times?
She may have developed humor or some other good feature? To better attract his interest, given that her siblings might be doing the same? Maintaining a sense of humor about her beautiful first name was essential, if "everyone" seemed to mis-spell it or mis-pronounce it.
By her 1870 Census, post-War, listed as "Nettie", age eight, the Civil War had been over for five years.
While her cousins may have attended church at Mattawan, Mr. Smeed would be one of three or four elders of a Presbyterian church serving Schoolcraft, more than Schoolcraft, as it was central to the rest. (An 1870 book of Minutes for their Michigan "Synod" listed the minister and rounds of elders. Mr. Smeed had already served for three rounds. Organized geographically, Schoolcraft was under the Kalamazoo Presbytery. A "presbytery" would be analogous to a diocese in some religions. A "synod", larger than the presbytery, was similar to an arch-diocese. Each had a large number of elected officers.)
They survived the crisis of 1873.
She and Deyo married in Schoolcraft in 1881, on July 12. (Did someone mix up this with her birthday, seen in a family tree as also July 12? Or, did she purposely schedule her wedding day, showing a sense of humor? Bringing me double gifts, anyone?)
Deyo called her "Nettie", when asking for the marriage license? That nickname used only unofficially? A couple called the Dibeans researched Michigan marriages, adding newspaper details to official records, to clean-up spellings. They produced highly reliable marriage lists by county. The Dibeans used her full legal name, "Annjanette Smeed", named her groom as "Deyo Manchester Hoyt".
She and Deyo would marry one more time, a decade later, out in Oklahoma Territory, in 1891. She was now "Angenette". Had there been confusion about the Michigan paperwork? They'd lost their personal copy?
Remarriage in Oklahoma would guarantee clear title to any of Deyo's land claims out there, should he die first? However, Deyo would delay filing his own land claim there, until seven years later, 1898. What caused the delay? Her father's death? Was the entry mad only after the final payment had been received, if buying "on time"?
When she took their young children to the Oklahoma Territory, pre-second marriage, it had recently opened for settlement. As in Michigan's pioneer days, presumably the men had gone there first, maybe to find work, maybe to put up buildings, to plant some crops or put up fences.
To make sure any land claims later would be fully legal, all names and places were spelled-out. That second wedding was of record March 5, 1891, in Logan County, Oklahoma. "Mrs. Angenette" Hoyt, of Schoolcraft, Mich., and Deyo M. Hoyt, of Downs, Ok., were again bride and groom:
SOURCE 1: Annjanette, Dibean Marriage Index for Michigan, Kalamazoo County, files.USGWarchives.net/mi/kalamazoo/vitals/marriages/dbn/kzoo-dbn-jun2014-h.txt
SOURCE 2: Nettie, official Mich. record, FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-6SDS-HD8
SOURCE 3: Mrs. Angenette, official Ok. record, FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:9Q97-Y339-7G94:
Annjanette's father died and was buried somewhere in the range Dec. 1895 to Jan. 1896. Records vary as to date.
Her father had the oddity of two Michigan death records, in different counties, adjacent months in different years. Was the first his death, the second his burial? Unlike California, Michigan burials could be delayed in the frozen months.
A small structure at a cemetery was often used to store bodies until relatives could arrive, his coming from NY? The Dec. record was in Schoolcraft, Kalamazoo County, followed a month later, by the second notice, in Jan., in St. Joseph County (Constantine Twp.) Did her father own land in Constantine? Or, it had a minister he preferred for his funeral? ( Her parents and four others named Smeed would be buried in Schoolcraft, as her parents lived their last years near where another daughter had moved.)
Her father's birthplace was listed wrongly as Scotland in the first record. The first mentioned "La Grippe" (a serious kind of flu), the second specified instead how his illness triggered death (the flu ended in heart failure, not pneumonia).
MORE MIGRATIONS. When Deyo finally found land, elsewhere, it was in Kingfisher County. Though other Hoyts filed claims in Logan County, OK, first, as early as 1893, then in Kingfisher, beginning in Feb. of 1895, Devo waited, did not file for his own quarter section until June, 29, 1898. Neighbors named Harrison may have gone to the same two counties. We assume the two families went for ranching, given the waterway there was called Cattle Creek. Was it a surprise when oil was discovered in the state?
Deyo's father was Ransford. He'd come to Mich. the hard way, on horse or foot, with or possibly ahead of the Harrison family, both sets coming from Ohio.
HARRISON & HOYT. The Harrison neighbors inMich and OK were originally from MD. They migrated through NY to OH, before settling on Michigan. The Harrisons may have met Haights while in NY, cousins to Hoyts leaving New England for Ohio.
For the Hoyts, spellings changed. Haight was old, pronounced differently than it looked to British eyes, so sound-it-outs first caused Hoit, then, with dialect changes, Hoyt.
There were several sets of earlier Hoyts, with eventual in-laws called Deyo giving her spouse his first name. With lots of sons, Simon Hoyt's set migrated from old CT by going up the Connecticut River, into Mass and Vt. Deyo's set instead used a different river, up the Delaware, to reach what their officials believed was old Connecticut's frontier.
The problem? The very same king had promised th eland, not just to old Conn., but also to old Pennsylvanians
Some Hoyts and others from CT thus settled in Pennsylvania's Luzerne County, including the family of Rev. Ard Hoyt. The Pennamite wars caused a second contest, with native Pennsylvanians then winning legal wars to claim the contested frontier land. It's been speculated that private deal-making, to create American states out of British colonies, traded Connecticut's "land developers" Pennsylvanian claims for land in northeast Ohio, called the Western Reserve. Conn. would sell much to finance its schools, but people from Conn. maybe had advance notice of what would be sold.
Thus, a Hoyt migration arc goes, from CT, through Penn., to Ohio, some later branching away to Michigan. The Mich. part was not possible until the War of 1812 firmly took Detroit out of the British grasp and put it in American hands. "Naturally" connected to Toronto in geography and history, the political change cut Detroit off from close-by Toronto, but a result was a fort site from which to begin a military route, from Ohio's Great Lakes area, through Detroit, down deep into Michigan, to get to Chicago.
DEYO. Annjanette's Deyo in-laws had been in NY long-term, there from the late 1600s. Preserve the sound, Deyo was not the original spelling. "De Yo" meant from a place that sounded like "Yo", but had been spelled a different way in French.
The first Deyo infant baptisms were in Kingston, NY, at a Dutch Reformed Church. Some NY Deyos were on record later possessing slaves. As a French-speaking people, with Dutch ties, they may have been, or married deeply into, an ethnicity called Walloon.
Walloons were located in a "halfway place", culturally and geographically between regions that were pure French and pure Dutch. They were historically northward of so-called "Huguenots". (Those who did, at the time, put the word "Huguenot" into their church names, for example, at New Rochelle in NY, instead of "Dutch Reformed", were people who had lived for generations in Rochelle, France. Old Rochelle was a Protestant region inside France proper, the rest of which was Catholic. The Rochellians began specifically Huguenot churches inside the NY colony, perhaps as they hoped to avoid cultural conflict with the Dutch, wanting to "signal", by naming themselves as Huguenot, that their services would be in French, not Dutch.)
SMEED. In contrast, Annjenett's father came from an England just finished with debating slavery and abolishing it. Thus, Mr. Smeed is of record with respect to the Civil War, as a soldier on the anti-slavery side. (Has anyone found any records of Hoyt brothers or uncles to Deyo serving in the Civil War from Kalamazoo County?)
Annjanette had once been from Van Buren County, as was Mollie Bell. The two married two Hoyt brothers from Kalamazoo County, Deyo and Owen Hoyt. Did they ever double date? picnic together, go to dances or church together?
1831-1839 LAND CLAIMS. The Hoyts claimed their first land in Michigan, as part of a team of relatives.
One local history says the Harrisons came first, from Springfield, Ohio, arriving 1827-1828, initially led in by a Pottowatamie guide, not saying whether Hoyts were along. Another history says the Hoyts were first, maybe not using a guide. Were they surveyors or with military scouts or a missionary, so not official? Their "too early" entry was several years ahead of land being legally offered through an authorized government land office. "Jumpers" often camped on/staked out desirable sites in advance, then were first in line when the land office opened for legal acquisition.
The BLM.gov web site allows checking the order of the first legal claims of each surname inside a future county subject to military warrant, homesteading, and other land grantings. Note that Ransford Hoyt was Deyo Hoyt's father (maybe named for some branch of in-laws called something like "Raynsford"):
HOYT LANDS, BY FIRST NAME and FIRST DATE:
Ransford C., 4/1831; Stephens, 6/1831;
Theodore S., 4/1837;
John S., Seymour, 5/1839.
Only Stephens Hoyt and John Hoyt bought in the same numbered township as did Ransford Hoyt, a standard township often six miles by six, except were stopped by waterways, etc.
HARRISON LANDS, BY FIRST NAME and FIRST DATE:
Ephraim, Nathan, 4/1831; Bazel, 6/1833;
Andrew, 7/1836;
Eli, Joseph, Lydia, all in 9/1838;
Benjamin, William, 5/1839.
Only Ephraim, Nathan and Bazel Harrison bought in the same numbered township as Ransford Hoyt. Was Bazel their version of Basil?
Deyo's father, Ransford Hoyt, came from Ohio with his father, Stephens Hoy (Deyo's grandfather, he would have been named after some family called Stephens. (The simplification of his name to Stephen Hoyt was probably done by his children after his death in the next decade, who lacked his parents fond memories of anyone named Stephens. )
Michigan was still a territory in 1831, not yet a state.
It's clear the Hoyts and Harrisons were legally present before buying land. Some months earlier, in Dec. 1830, organizers set up elections for Brady Township. It was extra-big, a mother township, including, at first, multiple of the numbered townships, not yet sufficiently populated to have separate elections for officials expected to build more roads and schools. In the first elections, no land owned yet, no claims filed, "Bazel" Harrison and "Stephen" Hoyt were elected as Highway Commissioners (the later historian substituting Stephen.)
These sets of Hoyts and Harrison arrived in the same place, but in steps, earlier ones getting things ready, so more could come. Land acquired in April might see a planting, by May, of seed, on cleared parts, with May 31 being an "almost too late" date for much to fully ripen before the first frost, a corn harvest to follow after the frost-bitten corn had dried out.
Most of those named above bought more land in years after their first purchases. The pattern was to acquire a small bit each time, considerably less than a full "quarter section" (one quarter of a square mile =160 acres). They thus lacked the cash to buy an entire quarter section for each person at the start.
Their having land records in the same county need not mean neighbors with the same surname were relatives, otherwise knew each other. Local histories said Theodore Hoyt, not in the same numbered township (numbered by surveyors before having names), was from Windsor, VT. The Seymour Hoyt family, also not in the same township, with four sons, was from New Haven, VT.
Deyos' Hoyts' particular numbered township later "spun-off" from mega-township Brady, called Prairie Ronde Township. The birth place and death place for many of Deyo's Hoyts, people tended to substitute the name of Schoolcraft, as it had a cemetery and was the post office to which mail would be addressed.
Stephens Hoyt was on record, earlier, with his assumed BROTHER Ransford Hoyt, selling land obtained as mutual heirs of Jeremiah Hoyt, back in Pennsylvania. The assumed brothers were possibly of record together next in Ohio.
Mega-townships subdivided into smaller ones, as population grew, more settlers coming in, plus maturing children starting their own households, a second round, with Deyo's and Anjanette's marriage second round.
First round? Stephen's son Ransford married soon after buying his "starter land", in 1832, to a Mary Hansen/Hanson, first wife, maybe elated to a David M. Hanson, nearby, no other Hansons of record there. David Hanson also acquired land in what become Prairie Ronde Township later, did so 4/1831. Mary must have died, as Ransford married again, in 1838, to Deyo's mother, Harriett Bair. (Not researched, if the name is Scottish, it could be a shortening of Baird. If recently Germanic, it could be a sound-it-out of something like Behr.)
People named Hoyt stayed in the area long enough to bury at least three generations. The Hoyts buried where they first lived.
HOYT HEARTHPLACE & HEARTBREAK
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We will discuss their heartbreak first, then their hearthplace, Prairie Ronde.
Male Tragedy. Lots of boys died. Longer term, in the larger population of the U.S., there were many deaths due to slow-killing "ague", common in the 1830s and 1840s (meaning malaria, quite common in low-lying areas where rain water could pool and stagnate, back when there were more marshes, with stagnant water easily mosquito-infested). Many also died, before antibiotics, from "consumption" (meaning TB, due to live, deadly bacteria caught from unpasteurized, or uncooked, milk, cow's or mother's, slowly contagious in other ways, coughing in over-crowded settings).
Children in one family might die close together, from quick contagions once common (no vaccines yet for diphtheria or whooping cough, serious diseases almost extinct now).
The "too young" Hoyt deaths were predominately boys. Perhaps there was a genetic condition affecting boys? Or, was it simply an accident of timing? if only boys had been born when a wicked contagion came through the township and then the house, then only boys would die?
Deyo lived. He had been born in Feb. 1856, pre-Civil War, near the end of a very large family. Five of his brothers died before he was born. His brother Lawrence, following him, born in 1862, died as a baby, in his year of birth.
Hoyt Survivors. Deyo's first sister, Mary Celeste, 6 years older, stayed local and survived. She married William Davis, then spent the rest of her life in Kalamazoo County. Her death, in 1928, was where she and the rest had been born, Prairie Ronde Twp. (Deyo's lists )
The ones buried locally? The total number of his father's children was said to have reached 13, the seven just listed, plus six more. The rest are found in the 1870 Census in the household of Ransford and Harriet, post-Civil War. All but the eldest would have been too young for the Civil War. The rest would have known who had children afterwards, versus who died.
The handwriting is a bit of a scrawl, so the 1870 census appears to count a "Rumferd" and "Hurries". (These and other "off-spellings" explain why people can be hard to find.) Three older brothers, still alive and in their early 20s, were listed first, then came Deyo, at 14. The scribble of his name looks like "Dey O", with his bit younger brother below, Owen, at 12, and another sister, Stella (proper name Estella), 10, at the end. Prairie Ronde Township, rural, is listed, its Post Office listed but outside the township, in Schoolcraft. The date is June 7, summer typical for censuses back then, not in April, like now, ages true as of that date. Three older brothers all farmed with their father. (ages 27, 24, and 20, the eldest one would stay local, be buried as Lovell R. Hoyt, but his scribbled name in 1870 looked more like S*v*ll, followed by Thomas, then Jonathan.
SOURCE, 1870, with Dey O Hoyt at 14: FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-6G17-Y96
SOURCE, 1860, with De Yoe Hoit at 4: FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GBSS-2NW
Annjanett's Hoyt Children. Seeing both a house and cemetery filled with Hoyt babies and adult siblings, did Annjanette expect to have more than three children? Families, in general, became considerably smaller after the Civil War, as more "moved to town" and space became expensive.
Annjanette's two daughters were said to be Kate Lou and Fannie Zenadie Hoyt, born before son Hugh. Their birth records say "Angenette" was their mother, their father apparently the one filling out the birth records, using just one n, never two. This writer has been told that Genette refers to a mule, could refer to a spinning jenny, used in weaving, while Jeanette is a human name derived from John (Jean in French). By the time Deyo died, the family had compromised, switching his preferred G to a J, but using a spelling never used by the Smeeds, who instead did Ann with two n's. Anjenette was the wifely name listed on HIS old stone, more French-appearing, to match Deyo.
Given that Deyo had so many brothers, Annjenett may have been surprised to have had only one son, Hugh Myron Hoyt (to become Hugh Sr. later).
Deyo's family would go off to Oklahoma. His close-in-age brother Owen would stay in Prairie Ronde? However, after Deyo and Owen died, their sons, Hugh and Jay, would both be found again, living near each other, off in Montana, in Richland County, both reporting there for their 1917-18 registrations for the WW I draft. Jay would list his widowed mother Mollie as his contact in Montana. Jay and Mollie Bell (using mother's maiden name of Bell as her middle name?) both died in Montana, but someone (Jay?) saw to it that Mollie was buried "back home".
Her family In 1900, census in Oklahoma, asking that a precise birth month and year be given:
Deyo, Feb. 1856, age 44, farmer, landowner, mortgage.
Ann J., July, 1866, age 33 [differs from other sources].
Kate, Apri., 1883, age 17.
Fannie, Dec., 1884, age 15.
Hugh, Feb., 1887, 13.
SOURCE: handwritten form, saved at FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-62WQ-6Z5
Had Annjenett tired of explaining her name to Oklahomans who had not grown up with her? She had become "Ann J." The volunteer transcribing from the handwritten record to a typed summary re-presented Deyo as "Dey", seen before.
As to children "ever had", versus number "now living", Annjenett's answer to both was 3. All teens were in school, unusual in that era unless living "in town", giving them more choices for occupation than being a farmer once older. (Perhaps their farm was on the edge of town, in walking distance of the HS? School bus service to the few high schools was rare then, so most rural children without easy HS access dropped out after their local grammar school ended at Gr.6 or Gr.8. The survey covered a school district, ED 107, in both Downs & Logan Townships.)
On Aug 10, 1909, still out in Oklahoma, daughter Fannie, 24, would marry Temple Virgil Truman, 25, an academic. They were smart people, though not all had lots of education. Her age at marriage indicates her education may have earned her a good job. Was she a teacher, something seen later in brother Hugh's side of the family? Her father, Deyo, had died in 1907, so missed the wedding. They were married by Niel Nissen, of the Congregational Church at Cashion, which might have more records. Mr. Truman was born in Crete, Nebr., address at marriage, Kingfisher, OK. She gave Schoolcraft, Mich., as birthplace and Cashion, OK, as residence. In the 1910 Census, they lived near his original home, in Nemeha, Nebraska. Annjenett lived with them, once again, as "Nettie Hoyt", just as on her marriage day, but this time a widow.
SOURCE: Oklahoma Marriage,FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:9Q97-Y3Q3-2HY
Hugh, by the next Census, the 1920, would move to Pasadena, near Los Angeles. As a divorced man, with his own son Hugh Junior present in Censuses, his widowed mother, Annjanette, probably arrived to help care for the son? The son had a sister, Jean Margaret, according to an obituary.
Her husband, Deyo, lies buried in Oklahoma. Her name is carved on his stone. [2023 UPDATE, That was true of his old, original stone, its photo is no longer at his webpage, a modern family stone with less information is now there.]
TALENTED DESCENDANT Laurie Kathleen Hoyt, d. 2010, best known as Laurie McAllister of Hollywood's The Runaways.
Writing her grandmother's story is this writer's way of thanking the great-granddaughter of the beautifully named Annjanette, for making good music.
Laurie died from respiratory complications of asthma, unable to call her sister for help, as she usually would have done. She was briefly of North Hollywood, also of Amsterdam abroad, then went back home, to Coos Bay and Eugene, Oregon. A few years before her own death, the intelligence of the family was seen in her father's obituary, as a college professor of history. An old album of the all-female group called "The Orchids" shows her as a tall and dark-haired bass player. She joined "The Runaways", too late to be listed on that group's last album cover. Exceptional as a bass-player, Laurie was the young woman wearing maroon in the The Runaways video entitled "Saturday Night Special". Its lyrics NOT for children's ears, it was one of their best performances, but under-appreciated. Using her stage name, Laurie McAllister, she was seen stage left of the famed Joan Jett. Her bass-playing was perhaps unusual, but pleased the ear.
The Hoyt family's rhythmic abilities dated back to Zerubabel Hoyt? Son of Walter, grandson of immigrant Simon, the name Zerubabel was itself a four-syllable song. He was said to play the drums to announce meetings and warnings, then later the church bells.
2017 Appendix--Hoyts and Haights, side trips to Vermont and NY:
There were two main lines of her Hoyts, one headed by immigrant Walter (the Hoyt branch of CT); the other, by his half-brother John (the Haight line of NY).
Walter and Zerubabel's Hoyt branch stayed in the Puritan parts of CT for generations. In contrast, John's line left CT early, living above Long Island, in old NY, amidst Quakers, quickly adopting the new spelling of Haight (the local NY dialect had its own spelling rules?) Also viewed as the older spelling of Hoyt!
The two sets crossed paths later, as Vermont welcomed settlers after the American Revolution. Both sets went to Addison County, Vermont, post-Revolution, clearly stayed through the War of 1812, some staying into the 1840s. The Quaker set, the Haights from NY, arrived first, settling in Monkton, more northish. The Hoyts of Puritan CT arrived second, in the same county, going not far south of Monkton, mainly to New Haven, VT. Greater in number than the Haights, the Hoyts arrived in spurts, over a decade, not in the same town. Earlier arrivals apparently went outside New Haven, to places the British still over-ran, pre-War of 1812, so the new "Americans" often retreated. Was New Haven maybe the safest place of several attempted? The bulk of the Hoyts' group came after a stay in Lanesborough, Mass., a stay so brief that just one generation married there. (Their parents had married in CT.)
An Addison county historian would remember Stephen Haight Jr., born in Dutchess County, NY, for his political activity on Monkton's behalf. The same historian would remember Hoyt brothers and in-laws arriving from Lanesborough, Mass. They named their main town New Haven, VT, thereby recalling the hometown of mother Sarah Seymour Hoyt back in CT. They were remembered as a set, as they arrived together to build homesteads and, later, their church, on a road that people came to call Lanesboro Street. Earlier, their frontier corner of Mass. had shared borders with both frontier NY and frontier VT. Shifts in state borders made birth states changeable, thus poorly remembered by a later generation.
When it came time to push the British back behind what Americans regarded as the US-Canadian border, circa War of 1812, several Hoyt brothers were in Stephen Haight's Monkton. They buried several Hoyt children in Monkton, though not in Stephen Haight's Quaker cemetery. However, the earlier sign of Hoyt-Haight contact at Monkton was a marriage, in or before 1806, between two widowed elders, Stephen Haight the Sr. of Monkton and the mother-in-law of a Hoyt brother. (Keturah Baker, aka Catharine, who had first married a Robblee/Rublee. Two relatives, her namesake daughter, the other named Permelia, a presumed cousin, remembered by surviving Hoyts as with surnames Roblea/Ruble, had married brothers Seth M. Hoyt and Uriah Hoyt, respectively. They married back in Lanesborough, where Keturah Baker's first husband had died. Then, at different points, the women moved to Addison County in Vermont, again of record there.)
Old sources remembered all three elders, Keturah Baker, William Robblee/Rublee and Stephan Haight, as having been born in Dutchess County, NY, when it was a mother county, larger than it is now (the two husbands are both named on Keturah's gravestone in Vermont?). They must have known each other back in NY.
They buried a few children there, again, not in the Friend's Cemetery of Stephen Haight. Monkton added jobs briefly, known for bog iron useful for the War A local town on the waterways was building iron-fortified ships, used to defend nearby Lake Champlain, and the Great Lakes beyond.
The Haights of Monkton came from the branch of Walter's half-brother John. Not to stay in CT, John's line had left early for provincial NY, to live amidst Quakers, northish of Long Island. "Haight" pleased the local NY dialect's spelling rules, more than did Hoyt. It was also convenient, signaled their religious change, after many left the Hoyt's Puritanism to became Quakers (Friends).
Those Haights never returned to the Hoyt spelling? However, Stephen Haight's family remained very much connected to Seymour Hoyt's family while both were in Vermont. The Quaker line's Stephen Haight, widowed, married second the also-widowed mother-in-law of two brothers to Seymour, named Uriah and Seth. Stephen's son, by his first wife, was Stephen Haight Jr. He was well-documented in Monkton, Vermont, history, as he served Monkton in local offices and the state legislature, before being sent to DC. To die in DC, he was buried back in Vermont. He, thus, was not the man coming to Michigan as Stephen Hoyt. Junior's son, John T. Haight, an attorney and farmer, then pioneered in Wisconsin before the Civil War.)
MISCELLANEOUS UPDATES
Anna Raynsford Hoyt, first wife to Jedediah Hoyt. She died in Lanesboro/ Lanesborough, Mass., is buried there, along with his second wife, Thankful. He instead died later in Luzerne County, Penn., maybe in 1792. Heirs Stephen Hoyt and Ransford Hoyt (his sons?), arranged the sale of his land in Providence Twp. They were then in Ohio (Logan County), with a Stephen Hoyt, possibly to be the one of Kalamazoo County, while that older Ransford took his family to NY, where he died in a fire. Again, of several named Ransford Hoyt, a younger one would be Stephen Hoyt's son and father to Deyo Hoyt.
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