A portrait of George Henry Hoyt, who served as Kansas' 6th Attorney General from January 14, 1867 to January 11, 1869. He was born in Athol, Massachusetts on November 25, 1837 and studied law in Boston. In 1859, when John Brown was on trial for the raid on the arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, Hoyt was sent by Boston abolitionists to act as one of Brown's attorneys. When the Civil War began, he enlisted in Company K of the 7th Kansas Volunteer Cavalry under command of Colonel Charles R. Jennison. In September 1863, Hoyt became Lieutenant Colonel of the 15th Kansas Volunteer Cavalry. After the war he practiced law in Kansas and was the editor of the Leavenworth Daily Conservative. In August 1871, Hoyt returned to Massachusetts, where he edited the Athol Transcript and served in the state legislature. He was an officer in the Grand Army of the Republic, a freemason, and an advocate for the temperance movement before his early death, at the age of 39, on February 2, 1877, in Athol, Massachusetts.
