My Genealogy Hound

REV. WILLIAM LYMAN HYDE, a minister of the Presbyterian church and a graduate of Bowdoin college, is a son of Capt. Henry and Maria (Hyde) Hyde, and was born at Bath, Maine, December 27, 1819. The first record that we have of the Hyde family in the United States is in 1636, when the name of William Hyde appears in the municipal affairs of Hartford, Connecticut. He soon thereafter removed to Norwich, that State, where he was frequently elected and served as a selectman. From him was descended General Elijah Clark Hyde, the paternal great-grandfather of Rev. W. L. Hyde, who was born on June 14, 1735, at Lebanon, Connecticut, where he died on the last day of the first year of the present century. He was the confidential friend of Gov. Trumbull and served as Washington’s quartermaster-general during the Revolutionary war. His son Zabdial (grandfather) was born June 4, 1762, at Lebanon, served at eighteen years of age in the closing struggles of the revolutionary contest and afterwards removed to Bath, Maine, where he died May 15, 1842. He married Mary Lyman and reared a family of eleven children, one of whom was Capt. Henry Hyde (father), who was born at Lebanon in 1792, and died at Bath, Maine, November 4, 1873. He was a book-seller by occupation, served as captain of an artillery company in the Maine militia for several years, held the office of notary public for several terms and was a whig in politics. He was twice married. His first wife was Maria Hyde, his third cousin, by whom he had one child — Rev. W. L. Hyde, and after her death he married Elizabeth Lovett, of Beverly, Massachusetts, who bore him three children — Henry, of Maine, and two who died young.

William Lyman Hyde received his education at Bowdoin college, from which he was graduated in the class of 1842. Leaving college he completed his theological studies, entered the ministry of the Presbyterian church and was ordained May 4, 1849. He was first settled as a minister over the church at Gardner, Maine, in 1849, where he remained until 1856, when he accepted the call of the Presbyterian church of Dunkirk, this county, of which he had charge for six years. At the end of that time (1862) he became chaplain of the 112th regiment. New York Vols., and served until the close of the war, when he accepted a call from the Presbyterian church at Ripley. He left Ripley in 1871 to become pastor of Sherman Presbyterian church, with which he labored until 1874. For the next ten years he was principal of the high school at Ovid, N. Y. In 1884 he came to Jamestown, where he has been principally engaged in journalism ever since. Mr. Hyde is a republican in politics and a member and the chaplain of James M. Brown Post, No. 285, Grand Army of the Republic.

On May 4, 1852, Rev. W. L. Hyde married Frances E. Rice, granddaughter of Dr. Thomas Rice, circuit court judge of Wiscassett county, Maine. To their union have been born three sons — Dr. Henry Warren, a practicing physician of Omaha, Nebraska, who married Nancy Plato, of Sherman; Wallace E., who died in infancy, and Captain Frederick W., born at Dunkirk, N. Y., and who is in command of the Fenton Guards of Jamestown, where he has been editor of the Jamestown Evening Journal for fourteen years.